Muhammad Rasheed's Blog, page 229

"The Sensation You're Experiencing is called 'The Quickening'"

Gary McCoy – [shared photo] CNN shows how many total viewers they have...





James Lindley - Jazz hands.
John Richards - As long as they all have their hands up... "Give me all your money!!"... There, now the memory of the 'Gentle Giant' is complete.
Mark Hitsman - What is this hands up crap we all know it's a lie
Gary C Li - If serial killers and despots were always portrayed by their childhood photos, we'd be "sympathetic" to them too. Does not make their crimes any less gruesome though.
Martin Roules - I thought they were surrendering to FOX NEWS as the all time ratings winner ... :D
Mark Hitsman - They should and then you got MADCOW what a loser she is
Sandy Brown Zumbro –

Martin Roules - The facts ...


Muhammad Rasheed - It seems like you all are suggesting that because black criminals kill other blacks inside of black communities, that it's perfectly okay for whites to kill blacks, too.
Muhammad Rasheed - So is it okay for blacks to kill whites since white-on-white crime is equally high?
Ian Macfarlane - Huh?
Muhammad Rasheed - "HUH? That's reverse racism!! GET 'EM!!!"
Muhammad Rasheed - [rolls eyes]
Ian Macfarlane - Your logic is astounding...... albeit based upon false presumptions, and then based upon the Media fueled 'false' narrative!
Muhammad Rasheed - Really?
Ask Martin up there... while he's cherry-picking facts from the DOD site… what the white-on-white crime statistics look like, while you’re busy having issues with your integrity.
Ian Macfarlane - The 'Hands up, Don't Shoot' narrative was a lie. This is what we re talking about.
Muhammad Rasheed - More integrity issues?
How many posts above you mention "black-on-black crime," Ian?
Ian Macfarlane - I am only speaking to the original 'Twitchy' post by Gary. I am not here to defend the comments of others. Yet you drew 'Strawman' conclusions which were set up and designed to instigate some sort of stupid argument, which is initially based upon a falsehood .. namely .... 'that it's OK for Whites to kill Blacks'! Clearly! .. your comments were meant to stir up trouble. You keep using the term, 'Integrity Issues'! I'm not sure you know exactly what that means? Are you inferring that I lack 'integrity'? ... and therefore anything I say is somehow skewed? We are only discussing the Ferguson case - nothing else - and for you to make it into something else, is dishonest.
Sandy Brown Zumbro –

The Blacksphere – That's a novel idea - think it will catch on?
Muhammad Rasheed - If the point of continuously bringing up "black-on-black crime" whenever blacks complain about unarmed black youth getting killed by white cops ISN'T supposed to be implying that “it's okay for them to do since you are doing it,” then what IS the point, Ian? #integrityCheck
Ian Macfarlane - You are obviously drawing the wrong conclusions. Inform yourself about the Brown incident.
Muhammad Rasheed - Explain.
Ian Macfarlane - No! ... I won't! .... Because you clearly own your own agenda, and the FACTS on are record ... if you care to read them. I won't get sucked into a debate with you, because, quite frankly .. it would be a waste of my time.
Sandy Brown Zumbro -

Ian Macfarlane - @Muhammad Rasheed... I've been reading many of your posts! It is CLEAR that you truly believe Michael Brown was just an innocent kid who was murdered, in cold blood, by a bloodthirsty white racist cop, for no reason at all! This is your belief! I get it! .... You have just confirmed for me, why the riots continue on .... by people like you.
Muhammad Rasheed - Ian Macfarlane wrote: "No! ... I won't! .... Because you clearly own your own agenda, and the FACTS on are record ..."
This means that the facts are NOT on record, and you are a racist. Thank you. Naturally if they WERE on record you would have zero problems putting them in my face. I called your bluff, and you were forced to backpedal. Good job.
Integrity check: fail
Sandy Brown Zumbro -

Muhammad Rasheed - Ian Macfarlane wrote: "I've been reading many of your posts! It is CLEAR that you truly believe Michael Brown was just an innocent kid who was murdered, in cold blood, by a bloodthirsty white racist cop, for no reason at all!"
Oh, there was a reason. Darren Wilson hates black people, just like the posters in this thread.
Brown WAS an innocent black kid who was murdered by a racist white cop, whose racist companions conspired to keep Wilson out of prison. This is how the racist privileged class traditionally operates in my country.
Ian Macfarlane - OMG! ... Whatever Rasheed! So anyone who disagrees with you is a 'racist'?
Muhammad Rasheed - No. Just the people that hate black people, like you and the other whites in this thread.
Take a bow.
Ian Macfarlane - Muhammad Rasheed ... Take a Bow! Tell us what you really think?
Muhammad Rasheed - The whites in this thread are racist as shit and have zero integrity.
Muhammad Rasheed - I thought it was obvious what I thought... or nah?
Ian Macfarlane - I'm sorry you feel that way. I am not racist. But criminal acts sometimes lead to unfortunate ends.... especially when someone attacks a policeman/woman.
Ian Macfarlane -

Gary McCoy - Muhammad, "...Just the people that hate black people, like you and the other whites in this thread."? Are you smoking crack? (Before you call Rev. Al, I say that to white people too.).
Sandy Brown Zumbro - In race-baiting world, I guess this lady is racist, too. smh

Ian Macfarlane - Thanks Sandy
Ian Macfarlane - "Hands Up! ... Don't Shoot"! ..... It Never happened!!!!!!
Ian Macfarlane - That is why the CNN photo becomes so disingenuous, and CNN makes themselves irrelevant as a news source.
Stilton Jarlsberg - Was this Al Jolson Day on CNN?
Sandy Brown Zumbro - ALL lives matter. To be taken seriously when they say that black lives matter, they should show concern about all black lives, not just those lost as a result of committing a criminal act.

Muhammad Rasheed - Ian Macfarlane wrote: "I'm sorry you feel that way."
I'm sorry I have to feel that way.
Ian Macfarlane wrote: "I am not racist."
Then why are you saying these things but you can't see the same stuff in your own people?
Ian Macfarlane wrote: "But criminal acts sometimes lead to unfortunate ends.... especially when someone attacks a policeman/woman."
There were no criminal acts. Brown WAS an innocent kid with no criminal record, and the KKK-affiliated Wilson just felt like killing him. He built his defense on 1/2 his integrity as a cop, and 1/2 on the "scary black guy" stereotype. And you and the grand jury bought it.
Muhammad Rasheed - Gary McCoy wrote: "Muhammad, "...Just the people that hate black people, like you and the other whites in this thread."? Are you smoking crack?"
No. I don't do drugs.
Gary McCoy wrote: "(Before you call Rev. Al..."
Rev. Al is not my leader.
Gary McCoy wrote: "...I say that to white people too.)."
"Objection, your honor! Relevancy!"
Muhammad Rasheed - Sandy Brown Zumbro wrote: "In race-baiting world, I guess this lady is racist, too."
This entire thread is a racist baiting tool. Did you think that only other white supremacists could see it?
Muhammad Rasheed - Sandy Brown Zumbro wrote: "ALL lives matter. To be taken seriously when they say that black lives matter, they should show concern about all black lives, not just those lost as a result of committing a criminal act."
This is the straw man argument that Ian mentioned earlier. Who said that there were no anti-crime efforts going on in the black community? Why are you just assuming that nobody cares about the crime in the poor neighborhood communities when we also get furious at outsiders coming into our communities and killing us based on their pre-programmed prejudices?
What is the point of misdirecting towards a different issue whenever I protest your people killing my people, if it isn't to argument that you think it should be allowed?
White criminals kill white people in your own communities, too. If every time a black criminal killed a white person, and you protested, and I immediately pointed out that white-on-white crime goes on as my direct response to your protest, how would that seem to you?
Muhammad Rasheed - What is wrong with you all?
Muhammad Rasheed - Ian Macfarlane wrote: "'Hands Up! ... Don't Shoot!' ..... It Never happened!!!!!!"
Based on what? The word of a KKK-affiliated cop? Do you hear yourself?
Martin Roules - Muhammed, I admire your passion. I only wish it was directed at the forces which are actually killing black men in America. While young black males account for about 1% of the population from 1980 to 2008, they made up an increasing proportion of homicide victims, going from 9% of all homicide victims in 1980 to 18% in 1994. After 1994, their proportion of homicide victims has remained relatively stable at about 16%. Where is your outrage about this?
Muhammad Rasheed - Martin, my outrage at the increased poverty, widening gap between the lower and middle class, and predatory corporate interests that take advantage of that situation -- although related -- is not the topic of discussion in this particular thread. I absolutely do have those discussions, with equal passion, but my current irritation comes from you all using those topics as a clear misdirection from this particular one.
Tell me: How come every time I protest the violent death of one of my own by one of yours, you immediately bring up black-on-black crime statistics? Tell me honestly how you would feel if I continuously brought up white-on-white crime statistics to justify why it is okay for black criminals to kill whites?
Muhammad Rasheed – FBI Murder Statistics – 2013

Muhammad Rasheed – FBI Murder Statistics – 2012

Muhammad Rasheed – FBI Murder Statistics – 2011

Muhammad Rasheed – FBI Murder Statistics – 2010

Muhammad Rasheed - The criminal element is just as ferocious among your people as they are among mine. Instead of bitchin' about what the First Lady is wearing or whatever other typical nonsense you all go on and on about, how come your Timelines aren't full of your outrage over how your people are treating other whites?
Muhammad Rasheed - Your nigh-continuous hypocrisy over the race issue keeps me furious with you.
Muhammad Rasheed - I know you all don't care to talk about race with us. You like to pretend you are the good guys all the time, and being forced to confront those items that represent the Euro-ethnic's legendary great wrongs cause you cognitive dissonance something fierce. I recognize this in you. But hiding from it only inbreeds this self-reinforcing fantasy land that you never do any wrong to anyone, you deflect all accusations away from you with slimy agility, and you convince yourselves that I'm the world's biggest threat, even though you've committed the greatest atrocities, and amassed the highest body counts since you've taken power in the world.
I think you are broken.
Muhammad Rasheed - I think you like being broken, are fiercely protective of this fantasy you've built up, pretending you are the good guys in the story, and you attack me because you are afraid that I'm going to topple you from power at some point, and you are trying to delay that karma for as long as you possibly can. That's what I think.
I want to talk to you about it, probe and analyze it. But I know you run from such subjects like they are the devil himself because it threatens your precious Caucasian Male Dominance Psychosis Forcefield.
Sandy Brown Zumbro –

Muhammad Rasheed - Please stop pretending that's Mike Brown. It's getting embarrassing.
Sandy Brown Zumbro - Stop pretending that it's not him.
Muhammad Rasheed - It's CLEARLY not him by way of the store owner never saying it was him. The cops alone said it was him because they needed it to be for their lie to work.
Muhammad Rasheed - Let your ridiculous fantasies go.
Sandy Brown Zumbro - White Racist Proves She Thinks All Blacks Look Alike
Muhammad Rasheed - Ferguson Store Owner Says He Doesn’t Believe That’s Mike Brown On Surveillance Video
Sandy Brown Zumbro –

Muhammad Rasheed - I'll admit to being genuinely fascinated by a fantasy world in which t-shirt messages and Facebook memes are admissible as proof of anything.
Muhammad Rasheed - You must be the Klan's marketing director.
Muhammad Rasheed - Mike Brown's Lengthy Arrest Record

The Truth in the Myth - 10% of the Brain

Brain is an organ that serves as the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate and most invertebrate animals. Its function is to exert centralized control over the other organs of the body both by generating patterns of muscle activity and by driving the secretion of chemicals called hormones.
Mind is that which enables a being to have subjective awareness and intentionality towards their environment, to perceive and respond to stimuli with some kind of agency, and to have consciousness, including thinking and feeling.  It is the set of cognitive faculties that enables consciousness, perception, thinking, judgment, and memory.
 ***************
Jackals Home - There are a couple Sci-Fi movies coming out where Scarlett Johansen wears an unflattering wig, and until recently, I thought they were the somehow the same film, that she was a drug mule who becomes a seductive alien that preys on men, but apparently that's not so.
The just-released trailer for "Lucy" is the one where she's a drug mule, and OD's, and rather than becoming a seductive man-vampire from planet badwig, she becomes a human Wii-fi hotspot with everything Magneto powers. And a shapeshifting bad wig. Which is fine.
I watch a lot of Sci-Fi movies from the 50's, and there's a lot of clowny goofass science in them. Spaceships are insanely roomy and optimistic, Interplanetary speeds are laughably quick, creatures mutate into giants based on their sulfur intake, radiation can do basically anything--stuff's just kinda based on guessy science. "This seems sciencey! Go with it."
But those movies come from a time when we knew a lot less than we do now. Now, it's one thing when a movie like Phantom Menace has a throwaway line about "dioxis" gas--it's not really a Sci-Fi film, it's inherently a fantasy, complete with wizards and noble knights.
But look, people who made Lucy, if you're selling me on something that takes place in a setting resembling the "real' world, then having Morgan Freeman use his gravitas to repeat the bullshit "humans only use 10% of their brain" old wives tale, (while playing a fucking scientist) then you might as well try to sell me a movie where ScarJo's humors were supercharged by contact with specially fed leeches.  It's fucking nonsense, and it sounds stupid. It's never been a real contention, in science, ever. It's certainly not something that people can reasonably believe in 2014. And you should have tried harder for your science fiction premise.
Brendan Howard - Kind of agree. 
Valkyrie Page - I would like to hope that today's science fiction actually has something to do with speculating on what might be possible in the future. When it comes to movies, it seems to have more to do with what sexy person they can put in scanty or skin-tight clothes. *sigh*
Lars DeRuntz - Same thoughts here. Glad my sci-fi bs meter is on target.
Lars DeRuntz - Lets give Morgan Freeman some credit. Maybe he really needs the money?
Karlton Little - Lol @ "humors".
Julia R. - Man that's a shitty gun lol
Valkyrie Page - It does what it says, though. Truth in advertising.
Jackals Home - I don't blame actors for being stuck with dopey writing, and I especially don't blame Morgan Freeman, because he was once a Dracula teaching me how to read: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wp0-y...
Tim M. - That 10% of your brain thing is the easiest way to get me to lose interest in a movie.
Jackals Home - It literally originated through a misunderstanding of something someone said in the 19th century. It's not fresh fodder for a 21st century Sci-Fi story.
Lars DeRuntz - They want viewers that only use 10% of their brains.
Brian Poe - The really shitty thing isn't how bad the premise is.  It's that it's from Luc Besson of 5th Element and Leon the Professional fame.  He can make campy fun scifi (like 5th Element) and he can do gritty modern (Leon) but I don't know what this is trying to be.  I think he should be giving us something better. 
Muhammad Rasheed - Seems like they can correct the problem of the literal inaccuracy, but still retain the fun concept that has intrigued all the sci-fi writers, by simply replacing 'brain' with 'mind.'  
Jackals Home - That 10% number is the problem, but if Morgan Freeman wanted to talk about a vague notion of "untapped human potential," I'd be way more likely to let it slide, even in a movie where a drug can teach you krav maga in ten seconds.
Muhammad Rasheed - In elementary school back in Detroit we learned that the brain itself is just as active when we're asleep as it is during full consciousness.  So I always just interpreted the "10% of the brain" concept as "10% of the mind."  A lot of people tend to coast on basic (similar to your argument as to why people follow the religion they do... because it's what they grew up with), so "10% of the mind" doesn't really seem too farfetched to me. 
Jackals Home - I'm sure 'humors' didn't seem farfetched to people in Ben Franklin's time, either, but if you grew up with the scientific literacy of the average victorian offal sweeper, maybe 'high tech sci-fi thriller' isn't the clearest sea to sail your art boat in.
Muhammad Rasheed - Like, pick a person with a good example of a "full life."  Someone who's accomplished a lot of impressive things, really contributed to society... basically made their mark in history and will be remembered.  Now compare this person to a lazy couch potato type person.  Of course both of their physical brains are 100% active, but how much of their minds are each taking advantage of? 
That's how I interpret that "10% of the brain" concept when it's repeated in fiction.
Jackals Home - Now imagine how many burn centers there would be in Florida if rockets were designed using hypothetical philosophical semantics instead of physics.
Muhammad Rasheed - It’s not just semantics.  The brain itself is a machine that does what it does outside of our conscious thought, that’s what makes “10% of the brain” a myth technically.  The machine functions at 100% capacity unless the owner is disabled.  The mind is the part we actually control:
“…mind is that which enables a being to have subjective awareness and intentionality towards their environment, to perceive and respond to stimuli with some kind of agency, and to have consciousness, including thinking and feeling.  It is the set of cognitive faculties that enables consciousness, perception, thinking, judgment, and memory.”
The mind is the part that the average human often demonstrates the usage of only a small percentage.  We have to apply ourselves to unleash our full potential, to make that rocket function properly.
Jackals Home - "it's not just semantics"
goes on to explain the semantic difference between mind and brain
Muhammad Rasheed - ["Fortunately I always keep mah feathers numbered for just such an emergency."]
Muhammad Rasheed - I said it's not just semantics, meaning it's not using 'brain' and 'mind' interchangeably to ultimately make no difference in the argument.  If they switched it to "10% of the mind" instead, it would fix the problem and no longer be technically wrong, which seems to be the point of the issue in your topic.
Jackals Home - If Morgan Freeman was playing an aw shucks Oprah-ready power of positive thinking bullshit peddler, who happened to encounter someone who OD'ed on self-actualization seminars and became an expert at Wi-Fi Krav maga fighting, that would make for a fertile narrative area to harvest.
If we're talking about chemistry, biology, and physics, having a basis in some science is more appropriate. 
Rather than the brain being this inscrutable thing, we're reaching the point where mental disorders are more likely to be diagnosed and treated with purely biological tools.  The NIMH is moving away from using the DSM, in favor of therapies with testable, predictable, and repeatable results.
http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/directo...
TL:DR In the world of facts, the brain is the mind.
Muhammad Rasheed - The mind powers down during sleep, while the brain is still at 100% functionality, so that's not true.  The mind is the conscious you, while the brain is the organ that houses it. 
Jackals Home - That should be the title of your new self-actualization seminar.
the Mind Powers Down during Sleep by Dr. Phil Rasheed.
Explaining how the unconscious you can empower the conscious you!
Appearing wednesday at the Council Bluffs Ramada Inn ballroom
don't park at Stuckeys, they will tow
Muhammad Rasheed - I don't have a self-actualization seminar.  I'm talking about the 10% concept and how it breaks down for the stories to work.
Jackals Home - And if you're still ready to count on a 19th-century misunderstanding as to how the brain functions to move your narrative, then you and Luc Besson will get along fine.
Muhammad Rasheed - Was that the "untapped human potential" reference from earlier?
Jackals Home - I don't understand the question. "Untapped human potiential" is vague but denotative, in that it can describe a panoply of things that human beings, as biological instruments, can be conditioned to do better (develop quicker reflexes, take a punch better, jump higher, be better at math, heal from injuries more easily). It implies a state of address toward a biological whole, addressing a wide spectrum of biological processes in order to effect change.
Replacing the scientifically specific "brain" with the semantically-squishy "mind" or "chakras" or "psyche" or "aura" is fine, narratively, unless the character speaking that line is supposed to be a scientist. Otherwise, it's the language of the charlatan.
If you have tumor that's giving you seizures, you go to a brain surgeon not a mindologist.
but wat if mind means motivation or abilfying successness tho 
Muhammad Rasheed - Jackals Home wrote: "I don't understand the question."
Earlier you said, "...but if Morgan Freeman wanted to talk about a vague notion of "untapped human potential..." and I wondered if that referenced the "19th-century misunderstanding" you mentioned.  What was the 19th-century misunderstanding?
Jackals Home wrote: "Replacing the scientifically specific 'brain' with the semantically-squishy 'mind...'"
I wasn't aware that the word 'mind' was part of mystical/pseudo-science terminology, Jackals Home.  When did that happen?
Jackals Home -  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_perc...
Find me a scientist who talks about treating the "mind" then. You're only going to find psychiatrists, and like I said, the winds of change are sweeping across treating mental health as something separate from bodily health. In 50 years, the DSM will be considered as antiquated as Pliny's Natural History.
Muhammad Rasheed -  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitiv...
“Cognitive science is an interdisciplinary field of researchers from psychology, neuroscience, linguistics, philosophy, computer science, and anthropology that seek to understand the mind.”
"How We Learn: Ask the Cognitive Scientist"http://www.aft.org/newspubs/periodica...
Muhammad Rasheed - Jackals Home wrote: "...and like I said, the winds of change are sweeping across treating mental health as something separate from bodily health. In 50 years, the DSM will be considered as antiquated as Pliny's Natural History."
Fifty years from now I would hope all of these disciplines would've made phenomenal leaps & bounds, taking us further in scientific progress, aiding in our understanding of the universe.  The NIMH link you posted described only the tweaking of terminology that they were using, based on still flawed models: "The strength of each of the editions of DSM has been “reliability” – each edition has ensured that clinicians use the same terms in the same ways. The weakness is its lack of validity. Unlike our definitions of ischemic heart disease, lymphoma, or AIDS, the DSM diagnoses are based on a consensus about clusters of clinical symptoms, not any objective laboratory measure."
Muhammad Rasheed - From your Wiki link it would seem that the idea "that people only meet a fraction of their full mental potential," paraphrased from William James and Boris Sidis, turned out to be true indeed based on the success the Sidis family had in using his methods in raising up their child prodigy experiment. 
Jackals Home - Cognitive science is a philosophical grab bag of distinct concepts, and it examines the origins of thought (If you look at the link for Neuroscience, you'll find it to be the study of the nervous system, for example).
It's not a "science" in and of itself, and It certainly doesn't treat "the mind" as an instrumentality separate from the brain. Tediously, you've answered something slightly to the left and south of my question, failing to find me a scientist who treats "the mind" rather than the brain, instead finding me a philosopher's circle of people who seek to establish a baseline for what thought is, then doing a little "ta-daa!"
If Morgan Freeman was playing a philosopher, linguistics expert, or computer programmer who was exploring what constitutes consciousness, again, I wouldn't find the premise annoying. But that character would be more appropriate for a remake of Short Circuit, or that movie where Johnny Depp is playing Evil Max Headroom.
"Unlike our definitions of ischemic heart disease, lymphoma, or AIDS, the DSM diagnoses are based on a consensus about clusters of clinical symptoms, not any objective laboratory measure."
Welcome to planet "the premise." It's almost like scientific data should be rigorously tested.
"William James Boris Sids blah blah"
Sample size of one kid, a claim they never made (10% of brain hur dur), and Dr. Phil Rasheed sees "a success." Yeah, no, I'm not gonna debunk every claim in the universe for you while your contention squirms all over the place like a hot buttered bar of soap on ice.
Muhammad Rasheed - James wrote: “Cognitive science is a philosophical grab bag of distinct concepts…”
Is that how you decided to interpret “interdisciplinary field of researchers?” 
James wrote: “…and it examines the origins of thought…”
Meanwhile the link specifically stated “that seek to understand the mind.”  Remember the part where you said, “Find me a scientist who talks about treating the "mind" then?”
That’s why that is relevant.
James wrote: “(If you look at the link for Neuroscience, you'll find it to be the study of the nervous system, for example).”
Mm.  It turns out if I look at any of the listed disciplines that make up the ‘interdisciplinary field of researchers’ of cognitive science, Behold!  I will discover that each is the study of a specialty item.  
James wrote: “It's not a "science" in and of itself…
Meanwhile that’s exactly what it is, with its own peer reviewed journal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitiv...
James wrote: “…and It certainly doesn't treat "the mind" as an instrumentality separate from the brain.”
“It brings together researchers from many fields who hold the common goal of understanding the nature of the human mind.”
Neuroscience specifically studies the brain and nervous system, it being a component of the greater interdisciplinary field of researchers that come together to study the higher abstract concept of the mind.  They’re linked in some way as yet not fully understood, but not the same.
James wrote: “Tediously, you've answered something slightly to the left and south of my question, failing to find me a scientist who treats "the mind" rather than the brain…”
Oh?
James wrote: “…instead finding me a philosopher's circle of people who seek to establish a baseline for what thought is…”
‘Thought’ is merely one of the things that the mind does. James wrote: “…then doing a little ‘ta-daa!’"
You know my ‘ta-daa!’ moment was awesome, stop playing.
James wrote: “If Morgan Freeman was playing a philosopher, linguistics expert, or computer programmer…”
It hasn’t escaped my notice that you keep downplaying the force and scope of the interdisciplinary field of researcher components of cognitive science by leaving out neuroscience, anthropology, and AI… presumably because you consider them “real science” and they throw a monkey wrench into your argument.
INTELLECTUAL DISHONESTY
James wrote: “…who was exploring what constitutes consciousness, again, I wouldn't find the premise annoying. But that character would be more appropriate for a remake of Short Circuit, or that movie where Johnny Depp is playing Evil Max Headroom.”
I get it.  It doesn’t seem like it should be real science to you, so you wish to immediately stop funding and label them heretics or whatever.  Not an unusual reaction; we’ve seen that mindset before. 
James wrote: “"Unlike our definitions of ischemic heart disease, lymphoma, or AIDS, the DSM diagnoses are based on a consensus about clusters of clinical symptoms, not any objective laboratory measure."
Welcome to planet "the premise." It's almost like scientific data should be rigorously tested.”
In this case, by NIMH’s own admission from the link you posted, their data currently lacks both validity and objectivity, which leaves behind the invalid premise, subjective opinion, wishes, faith, and belief.  Interesting.   
James wrote: “"William James Boris Sids blah blah"
Sample size of one kid, a claim they never made (10% of brain hur dur)…”
According to the Wiki link you posted, the claim they DID make is that “people only meet a fraction of their full mental potential,” and using my own example of the accomplished historical figure versus the lazy couch potato, 10% of their MIND is probably being generous.  I agree that “10% of the brain” would be technically inaccurate as I learned back in elementary school.
James wrote: “…and Dr. Phil Rasheed sees ‘a success.’"
[takes a bow]
James wrote: “Yeah, no, I'm not gonna debunk every claim in the universe for you…”
You called that “debunking,” eh?  Seemed more like an intellectually dishonest tantrum. 
James wrote: “…while your contention squirms all over the place like a hot buttered bar of soap on ice.”
Well, you’ve certainly just proven yourself expert in the field of slippery contention.  You would know it when you saw it, so you can have that one.

MYTH: "All stereotypes are based on truths."

Muhammad Rasheed - What makes stereotypes bad is that they are used to blanket describe a whole group and that is never accurate. For example, racial stereotypes that describe an entire race as poor have to ignore the middle and upper class members of that race. The only truth people who perpetuate that particular stereotype reveal is how ignorant and narrow minded they are by saying it.
Stereotypes that describe certain behaviors and blanket an entire ethnicity with them are also based on ignorance of a bigger picture. For example, "All Jews, Koreans, Chaldeans, etc. are middle man groups in black communities!" is only true of certain connected families who have a particular plan for their children and grandchildren, and by no means describes that entire ethnicity. Bigots and racists will continue to say that stuff about the entire group even when those particular families have reached their goals and are no longer in the middle man role.
Bakkah Rasheed-Shabazz - "All men are dogs. Black men don't love their wives and children. Black women are all hoes, and unfit mothers". These are promoted in the media.
J Arealia Crear - I think the statement that "stereotypes are BASED in truth" is accurate. We are not saying the stereotype is true. Stereotypes tend to use the word "all", which makes them easy to debunk. But if the stereotype is "all Jews are wealthy", it is BASED on the fact that there are a lot of wealthy Jews. The statement you are calling a myth was not meant to say the stereotypes are accurate. Stereotypes are not accurate. It was, instead, meant to say that the stereotype isn't COMPLETELY false (just like it is not COMPLETELY true).
J Arealia Crear - I agree with everything else you say. Stereotypes are bad, and bigots will use them to make stupid inferences. ... but, generally speaking, there are at least SOME people who are stereotypical, and my experience has taught me that there are many stereotypical people. Not all, but many.
Muhammad Rasheed - There is nothing that any individual humans do that can't be found inside of every other group of humans. That fundamental truth is the reason why 'all stereotypes are based on truths' is false, because people use the stereotype to define an entire group. That's the part that makes it false, not the fact that you can find some individuals among the group that have traits to fit the stereotype profile... you can find individuals among EVERY human group that will have traits to fit the profile, too. That's the point.
Stereotypes are used by people who are anxious to find definitive differences between us that can be used to separate each of us from the other.
J Arealia Crear - On an academic level, you are logically correct. If I say Chinese people are short, you'll show me that one Chinese NBA center (whose name slips my mind). Or you'll say, but short people can be found in all cultures, so not fair to put shortness on the Chinese. But there are far more short Chinese people than tall... I'd say that stereotype is based in reality.
J Arealia Crear - It is difficult to defend any statement that involves the word "all", even the statement along the lines of "all stereotypes are inaccurate..."
Muhammad Rasheed - To give a statistical average about a particular people is not the same thing as creating a generalized profile and blanketing the entire group with it. If I hear that there's a Chinese person coming to the job, I can have certain expectations based on my knowledge of the national average, but I would be wrong to pull out my generalized profile based on stereotypes and act like the new co-worker isn't a 'real' Chinese person because he doesn't fit the stereotypes.
John Kraft - Remember all Germans are war mongers. All French are drunks. All British are stuck up prigs. All Americans are loud and boarish
J Arealia Crear - Change the word all to many, and you'll find a lot of truth.
Daniel Stone - well, think of it this way; stereotypes act as suggestions for behavior. the generalization labelled upon a people will, if projected and reinforced often enough, begin to inform the behavior of the targeted group. Especially if the group projecting the stereotype puts forth effort towards creating systems that will force people to act out these behavior (economic disparity and limitation of opportunities will create a desperate enough situation that people will begin to act out violently and irrationally).
Muhammad Rasheed - The reason why stereotypes are false is that they used to describe a particular group, despite the fact that those traits don't describe every member of that group, and describes members of every other group as well. No individual group has a monopoly on the list of stereotype traits that are falsely used to pin down that group.

The Quest for the Lost Ark of the Covenant

Muhammad Rasheed - [shared link] Graham Hancock ~ Quest For The Lost Civilization - Full Movie Link
"The first Europeans to arrive in Ethiopia had addressed the monarchs of that country as ‘Prester John.’" (The Prester John of the Indies: A True Relation of the Lands of Prester John, Being the Narrative of the Portuguese Embassy to Ethiopia in 1520 written by Father Francisco Alvarez, edited by C.F. Beckingham and G.W.B. Huntingsford, 1961
Graham Hancock - [excerpted from The Sign & The Seal] “This use of the sacred relic as a war palladium – and as an effective one at that – was not, according to Archpriest Solomon [Gabre Selassie, Head of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church in Britain], just something that had happened in Ethiopia’s distant past. On the contrary: ‘As recently as 1896 when the King of Kings Menelik the Second fought against the Italian aggressors at the battle of Adowa in Tigray region, the priests carried the Ark of the Covenant into the field to confront the invaders. As a result of this, Menelik was very victorious and returned to Addis Abada in great honour.’
“I re-read this part of the reply with considerable interest because I knew that Menelik II had indeed been ‘very victorious’ in 1896. In that year, under the command of General Baratieri, 17,700 Italian troops equipped with heavy artillery and the latest weapons had marched up into the Abyssinian highlands from the Eritrean coastal strip intent on colonizing the whole country. Menelik’s forces, though ill prepared and less well armed, had met them at Adowa on the morning of 1 March, winning in less than six hours what one historian had subsequently described as ‘the most notable victory of an African over a European army since the time of Hannibal.’ In a similar tone, the London Spectator of 7 March 1896 commented: ‘The Italians have suffered a great disaster… greater than has ever occurred to white men in Africa.’ "
Muhammad Rasheed -  During your research, Graham, did you ever come across this little tidbit?  I figured you probably didn't, or it surely would've shown up inside of your celebrated book.  Check it out: "It is also said that Genghis Khan wanted to attack the kingdom of Prester John, but that the latter repulsed him by unleashing thunderbolts against his armies.” ~René Guénon, The King of the World (also published as Lord of the World, Le Roi du Monde, 1927)
Graham Hancock - In response to Muhammad Rasheed -- very interesting quote from René Guénon. Thank you for drawing my attention to it. I have just gone to Amazon and bought a volume of collected writings by Guénon called King of the World, and also another shorter volume called Lord of the World just to be sure I have the right one! Thanks again.

RESPONSE - "A Message to President Obama from a Former Muslim"

Tony Boyd - @Muhammad… You've discussed many Muslim issues before so for that reason I am wondering if you are aware of the "A Message to President Obama from a former Muslim" video and are you going to blog about it or at least have a discussion about it?
Muhammad Rasheed - No link?
Tony Boyd - Sorry, I just saw it as a video posted to a FB page. Here you go:  [posts link from an article by a ‘Dave Huntwork’ who shares the vid]

Muhammad Rasheed - Thanks. That's the one I clicked on when I Googled it.
Before I even begin, in my experience, some of the people I can count on to know the least about what the religion of Al-Islam is about, are those former "cultural Muslims" ('I'm a Muslim because it's what I found my family doing, not what I deliberately chose for myself'). I see the typical traits of it all in this article.
Give me a minute because my Internet connection is acting funky and it's hard to watch video over here because they drag.
Muhammad Rasheed - Dave Huntwork wrote: "...and fantasies of a heavenly reward of seventy-two virgins."
Right-wing American conservatives invented this, thought it was funny and so kept repeating it, and now they forgot they invented it and people think it belongs to me for no other reason than because they keep hearing it oft-repeated. The only ones who actually believe in the '72 virgin' thing are my non-Muslim ideological enemies, ironically.
Tony Boyd - When I first saw the video I didn't see it on the website. I am more and more skeptical of what I see on the net. So I try not to always take stuff at face value. Basically, I'm seeking either verification, corroboration, or invalidation of what I heard from the video. Or some combination as the case may be.
Muhammad Rasheed - It will be my pleasure.
Muhammad Rasheed - Did you even watch this all the way through, Hype?  It really is typical anti-Islam propaganda with all of the usual talking points.

A Message to President Obama from a former Muslim by Brother Rachid
Brother Rachid - [the full transcripted message] Dear Mr. President,
With all due respect, sir, I must tell you that you are wrong about ISIL.  You say ‘ISIL speaks for no religion.’  I’m a former Muslim. My dad is an imam.  I spent more than twenty years studying Islam.  I hold a bachelors degree in religious studies.  And I’m in the middle of my master’s degree in terrorism studies.   I can tell you, with confidence that ISIL speaks for Islam. 
Allow me to correct you, Mr. President, ISIL is a Muslim organization.  Its name stands for ‘Islamic State.’  So even the name suggests that it is an Islamic movement.  Their leader Abu Bakr Baghderi, holds a PhD in Islamic Studies.  I doubt you know Islam better than he does.  He was a preacher and a religious leader in one of the local mosques in Bagdad.  ISIL’s ten thousand members are all Muslims.  None of them are from any other religion.  They come from different countries, and have one common denominator: Islam.   
They are following Islam’s prophet Muhammad in every detail.  They imitate him by growing their beards, shaving their mustaches, and in the way they dress.  They follow his command in the hadith to differentiate themselves from the infidels by wearing… by wearing their watches on the right instead of the left hand.  They implement sharia in every piece of land they conquer.  They pray five times a day.  They have called for a caliphate, which is a central doctrine in sunni Islam, and they are willing to die for their religion.  They are following the steps of Islam’s prophet Muhammad to the letter.  By the way, if you want to understand ISIL, read The Life of the Prophet Muhammad by Ibn Hisham.  This is their model for action. 
You think that ISIL does not speak for Islam because they beheaded an American, and they kill those all they consider ‘infidels.’   In the same way, Islam’s prophet Muhammad beheaded in one day between 600 and 900 adult males in a Jewish tribe called Banu Qurayza.  In fact, beheaded is commanded in the Qur’an, in Sura 47 the 4th verse.  It says, “When you meet the unbelievers (in fight) smite at their necks.”  Ironically, this Sura is called “The Sura of Muhammad.”  Killing prisoners is also an order from Allah to Muhammad and to all Muslims.  It says, “It is not for a prophet to have captives of war” and told him to inflict a massacre upon Allah’s enemies in the land (Qur’an 8:67).  And by the way, three of Muhammad’s wives were Jewish girls he kidnapped from his raids upon the religious minorities, just as ISIL is doing today.   
Mr. President I grew up in Morocco, supposedly a moderate country, yet I still learned at a young age to hate the enemies of Allah, especially Jews and Christians.  These are represented today by Israel and the West, especially the “Great Satan” America.  I prayed five times a day, repeating the Al-Fatiha, the first chapter in the Qur’an, asking Allah to lead me not in the way of those who went astray, and those who have the wrath of Allah upon them.  We all knew that it was Jews and Christians.  We have been brainwashed to hate all of you in our sacred texts, in our prayers, in our Friday sermons, and in our educational systems.  We were ready to join any group that one day would fight you and destroy you and make Islam the religion of the whole world as the Qur’an says. 
This is what I, and millions like me, have been taught.  Mr. President this is an irrevocable fact.  Fortunately when I grew up I chose to leave Islam and became a Christian, because I believe that God is love.  Others also left and still every day are leaving Islam and are choosing different paths for there lives.   All of them are suffering today because again, Islam’s prophet Muhammad said, “Whoever changes his religion, kill him.”  I left Morocco under persecution; I was fortunate.  Others, throughout the Muslim world, do not have the same opportunity.  They are paying a heavy price, in different ways, in order to get their freedom one day.  I ask you, Mr. President to stop being politically correct, to call things by their names.  ISIL, Al-Qaeda, Booku Haram, Al Shabeb in Somalia, the Taliban, and their sister brand names, are all made in Islam, and unless the Muslim world deals with Islam, and separates religion from state we will never end this cycle.  Until you deal with the root of the problem, we will be just dealing with the symptoms.   ISIL is just one symptom.  If it disappears other ISILs will be born under different names.   You might ask, “Then why does ISIL kill other Muslims?”  The answer is that they consider them infidels not Muslims.  Did you know that all four schools of Islam agree that if a Muslim stops praying, he should be asked to repent, and if he does not, he should be killed?  Did you know that Muhammad tried to burn his own companions when they stopped coming to prayers?  So anything that qualifies a Muslim to be an infidel can be a reason for killing him, even neglecting to pray.  If Islam is not the problem then why is it that there are millions of Christians in the Middle East and yet none of them has ever blown up themselves to become a martyr, even though they live under the same economy, political circumstances, and even wars.  Why have many Muslims in the west also joined ISIL if Islam is not the reason?   
Why have even new converts to Islam have been terrorists?   
Mr. President, if you really want to fight terrorism, then fight it at the root.  How many Saudi Shias are preaching hatred?  How many Islamic channels are indoctrinating people and teaching them violence from the Qur’an and the hadith?  How many Friday sermons are made against the west, freedom, and democracy?  How many Islamic schools are producing generations of teachers and students who believe in jihad, martyrdom and fighting the infidels? 
And finally, how many websites are funded by governments – your allies – that have sheikhs who issue fatwas against basic human rights?  If you want to fight terrorism start from there.  By the way, I do not give my full name because Islam is a ‘religion of peace.’  I’m known around the whole world as ‘Brother Rachid’ and I implore you to take a stand for international human rights and the future of democracy and speak the truth about the real threat that is facing all of us.   
Best regards, 
Brother Rachid
Muhammad Rasheed - Brother Rachid wrote: “Dear Mr. President, With all due respect, sir, I must tell you that you are wrong about ISIL.  You say ‘ISIL speaks for no religion.’  I’m a former Muslim.”
In my experience it is the former Muslim, the transgressor of faith, who possesses some of the least understanding of what Al-Islam is all about.  The “cultural Muslim” who reluctantly practiced an Islam only because it is what he found his family doing, and in general had to be made to do it, had a surface understanding of the religion at best.   The declaration “I’m a former Muslim” doesn’t automatically come with strong wisdom and insight into the knowledge base. 
Brother Rachid wrote: “My dad is an imam.”
What does that have to do with you?  So your dad cared and took the time to understand the faith to show himself approved in the eyes of his Lord.  He’s the Muslim.  Does that automatically mean you care about it and want to master it at the deepest levels?  Obviously not.
Brother Rachid wrote: “I spent more than twenty years studying Islam.”
Sure you did.  You spent more than twenty years half-assing a faith you never really cared about that you dropped like a hot potato the second you came across something that matched the lifestyle you wanted to live.
Brother Rachid wrote: “I hold a bachelors degree in religious studies.”
I know a lot of people with bachelor degrees.  So?  Does that mean you have a deep insight into the religion of your people, or that is where you were introduced to the faith you picked up later and focused all of your attention towards?
Brother Rachid wrote: “And I’m in the middle of my master’s degree in terrorism studies.”
It must be a piss-poor program then. 
Brother Rachid wrote: “I can tell you, with confidence that ISIL speaks for Islam.  Allow me to correct you, Mr. President, ISIL is a Muslim organization.”
Although composed of primarily self-identifying Muslims, ISIL is a militant organization with a military agenda.  It is not a “Muslim organization” and you can tell that by way of all the high profile actions they have demonstrated under the org’s name being patently un-Islamic.  There are strict battle rules in Islam (that someone who’d been studying Islam for 20 years should be aware of, I would think) and the fact that this militant group doesn’t adhere to a single one of them clearly shows that they uphold the militancy of ISIL over the Islam of the individual members.  ISIL is not a Muslim organization.
Brother Rachid wrote: “Its name stands for ‘Islamic State.’  So even the name suggests that it is an Islamic movement.”
The Christian Knights of the Klu Klux Klan had the word “Christian” in their name.  What am I supposed to infer from that?  That Jesus hates n1ggers? 
Brother Rachid wrote: “Their leader Abu Bakr Baghderi, holds a PhD in Islamic Studies.  I doubt you know Islam better than he does.”
You’re supposed to have a degree in religious studies and working on one in terrorism, but you can’t tell a military organization from a religious one.  I’ll hold the president’s knowledge and ability to learn over both yours and Baghderi’s combined.  
Brother Rachid wrote: “He was a preacher and a religious leader in one of the local mosques in Bagdad.  ISIL’s ten thousand members are all Muslims.  None of them are from any other religion.  They come from different countries, and have one common denominator: Islam.”
It doesn’t mean over much if none of that combined believer knowledge makes its way into any ISIL action items though, does it?  
Brother Rachid wrote: “They are following Islam’s prophet Muhammad in every detail.  They imitate him by growing their beards, shaving their mustaches, and in the way they dress.”
So tell me, Mr. I’ve-Studied-Islam-for-20-Years, if they are indeed following the prophet in “every detail,” how come they are growing beards & trimming mustaches which lends not a jot or tittle towards saving their immortal souls, but are not following the prophet’s examples for Islamic warfare which absolutely will determine the state of their souls?  Cutting facial hair isn’t a sin.  Slaughtering the innocent and especially fellow believers absolutely is a sin. 
 Brother Rachid wrote: “They follow his command in the hadith to differentiate themselves from the infidels by wearing… by wearing their watches on the right instead of the left hand.”
Sure.  Backwards Arabs from 1,500 years ago didn’t have a toilet or electricity, but they made sure to keep their Rolex’s on the fashionably correct wrist.  Do you hear yourself?  lol 
This is the point where I’m confident the president’s aid deleted your email message. 
Brother Rachid wrote: “They  implement sharia in every piece of land they conquer.”
Do they?  Al-Qaeda told them to tone the atrocities down because it was embarrassing.  Let that sink in for a minute.  
Brother Rachid wrote: “They pray five times a day.  They have called for a caliphate, which is a central doctrine in sunni Islam, and they are willing to die for their religion.”
That’s the personal practitioner of Islam part of their individual lives before they even formed the organization.  They were already doing that since they were young.  What does it have to do with ISIL?  Do you still pray to Jesus before you go into your place of employment?  Does that instantly turn 7-11 into a Christian store? 
Just an example since I don’t know where you work because of your advanced secrecy. 
Brother Rachid wrote: “They are following the steps of Islam’s prophet Muhammad to the letter.  By the way, if you want to understand ISIL, read The Life of the Prophet Muhammad by Ibn Hisham.  This is their model for action.”
[From the introduction to The Life of the Prophet Muhammad by Ibn Hisham] “It is always extremely difficult to be objective about the life of the founder of a great religion - his personality is inevitably blurred by an aura of the miraculous. Early biographers are preoccupied, not with historical fact, but with glorifying in every way the memory of one they believe to have been a Messenger of God or even God Himself. Consequently, there is a rich accretion of myth and miracle, mysterious portents and heavenly signs, of residues from other religious beliefs and traditions, the propaganda, in fact, of an expanding faith. All these will be found in the biography of Muhammad which follows.”
So the obvious absurdities and foolishness that ISIL performs are part of those, right?  That’s why none of their actions find support within the Qur’an?
Brother Rachid wrote: “You think that ISIL does not speak for Islam because they beheaded an American, and they kill those all they consider ‘infidels.’”
I’m sure he thinks it because they attack the innocent unprovoked which is 100% against God’s command for warfare in the Qur’an because as a constitutional scholar from Harvard he has better reading comprehension than you.
Brother Rachid wrote: “In the same way, Islam’s prophet Muhammad beheaded in one day between 600 and 900 adult males in a Jewish tribe called Banu Qurayza.”
The warring soldiers of Banu Qurayza broke their treaty with the Muslims and sided with their sworn enemies in pagan Mecca, and acted again and again to destroy them.  After being given chance after chance to do right they preferred to be the Muslims' enemies. They were beheaded because they were at war and they were the enemy who chose that death.  
Brother Rachid wrote: “In fact, beheaded is commanded in the Qur’an, in Sura 47 the 4th verse.  It says, ‘When you meet the unbelievers (in fight) smite at their necks.’”
A clean death by beheading is a mercy from God during a battle, Rachid.  Perhaps you would prefer instead to be sliced through the arm and partially into a lung?  You must be pretty gangsta.  I would opt for the beheading rather than writhe in agony for hours and hours and hours in the filthy sand until I finally expired from some very horrifying gangrenous infection, but that’s me.
Brother Rachid wrote: “Ironically, this Sura is called ‘The Sura of Muhammad.’”
So?  It’s called that because it mentions the prophet by name in the second verse… one of the few that does.  It is also known as “The Fighting” because of the actual content of the chapter. 
Brother Rachid wrote: “Killing prisoners is also an order from Allah to Muhammad and to all Muslims.  It says, “It is not for a prophet to have captives of war” and told him to inflict a massacre upon Allah’s enemies in the land (Qur’an 8:67).
The Holy Qur’an 8:67-6967. It is not fitting for a prophet that he should have prisoners of waruntil he hath thoroughly subdued the land. Ye look for the temporalgoods of this world; but Allah looketh to the Hereafter: And Allah isExalted in might, Wise.
68. Had it not been for a previous ordainment from Allah, a severepenalty would have reached you for the (ransom) that ye took.
69. But (now) enjoy what ye took in war, lawful and good: but fear Allah:for Allah is Oft-forgiving, Most Merciful.
By the context, the taking prisoners during the conflict was of economic important and God said that was inappropriate, basically a distraction from the whole point of the conflict, which was to get the enemy to stop fighting so the believers could know peace and focus on their community building.  “Inflicting a massacre” is only the default if you are biased and have a really poor knowledge of the Qur’an.  He commanded the believers to cease fighting should the enemy cease fighting, and allow there to be peace. 
Brother Rachid wrote: “And by the way, three of Muhammad’s wives were Jewish girls he kidnapped from his raids upon the religious minorities, just as ISIL is doing today.”  
Islam was the religious minority of that time.  The Jewish tribes had the backing of the resources of the powerful pagan Meccans that they sold the Muslims out for, remember?     
Brother Rachid wrote: “Mr. President I grew up in Morocco, supposedly a moderate country, yet I still learned at a young age to hate the enemies of Allah, especially Jews and Christians.”
Does Allah say that the People of the Book are His enemies in the Qur’an?  If He considered them His enemies, why would He bid them to call to cultural remembrance His favor onto them in the past, and to remember the covenant they made with His previous messengers? 
Brother Rachid wrote: “These are represented today by Israel and the West…”
Oh?  Do the secular Zionists of modern Israel represent the Jews, or do the actual Jews represent the Jews?

Do the manipulations of US intelligence agencies for the benefit of mega-corporate interests represent Christianity?
Brother Rachid wrote: “…especially the “Great Satan” America.  I prayed five times a day, repeating the Al-Fatiha, the first chapter in the Qur’an, asking Allah to lead me not in the way of those who went astray, and those who have the wrath of Allah upon them.”
Too bad you weren’t sincere in your prayers, chief.  Now nothing will save you.  Tsk.
Brother Rachid wrote: “We all knew that it was Jews and Christians.”
Those who go astray are those who decide to no longer believe in God, and prefer to sow mischief in the earth over good.  Your “20 years of study” consisted of everything BUT Islam, and now you’ve dedicated yourself to preaching foolishness.  
Brother Rachid wrote: “We have been brainwashed to hate all of you in our sacred texts, in our prayers, in our Friday sermons, and in our educational systems.  We were ready to join any group that one day would fight you and destroy you and make Islam the religion of the whole world as the Qur’an says.”
And where does the Qur’an say this?     
Brother Rachid wrote: “This is what I, and millions like me, have been taught.”
It would certainly help explain why the Golden Age of Islam is behind us.  Because the people of today are fools. 
Brother Rachid wrote: “Mr. President this is an irrevocable fact.  Fortunately when I grew up I chose to leave Islam and became a Christian…”
We’ll see how fortunate you feel when you are dangling over the Pit for your transgressions and slander.  Good luck!
Brother Rachid wrote: “…because I believe that God is love.”
God loves, and He is FAR more than merely that.  Do you think you can sum up the Supreme Creator of all reality with your little mind?  
Brother Rachid wrote: “Others also left and still every day are leaving Islam and are choosing different paths for there lives.   All of them are suffering today…”
You think they are suffering now?  Hm.
Brother Rachid wrote: “…because again, Islam’s prophet Muhammad said, ‘Whoever changes his religion, kill him.’”
For one, that’s your first time quoting that, so I guess you must be remembering something you said from an earlier take.  Second God said that there is no compulsion in religion, so honestly… granted you’ve proven honesty to be kind of difficult for you… what are the chances that the prophet of Allah would command the believers to do the opposite of what his Lord said? 
But you studied Islam for 20 years, right?  Interesting.
Brother Rachid wrote: “I left Morocco under persecution; I was fortunate.”
We’ll see how fortunate you’ll turn out.  You yet have opportunity to repent of your transgression and submit to the One who made you.  Will you heed and save your soul or nah?
Brother Rachid wrote: “Others, throughout the Muslim world, do not have the same opportunity.  They are paying a heavy price, in different ways, in order to get their freedom one day.”
Do you think leaving the Path of God is a “freedom?”  You are a fool, and your degrees mean nothing.
Brother Rachid wrote: “I ask you, Mr. President to stop being politically correct, to call things by their names.  ISIL, Al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, Al Shabeb in Somalia, the Taliban, and their sister brand names, are all made in Islam…”
Nay, they were made within the terrors inflicted by decades of the west’s interventionist foreign policies and meddling in the affairs of sovereign nations.  Where were these groups in the decades before Zionist colonialism backed by the west’s resources?
Brother Rachid wrote: “…and unless the Muslim world deals with Islam, and separates religion from state we will never end this cycle.  Until you deal with the root of the problem, we will be just dealing with the symptoms.”
In addition to the cessation of the west’s interventionist foreign policies, the Muslim world needs to embrace true Islam again and return to the mindset of the Golden Age when they put God and the thirst for learning before material greed.  The LAST thing they need to do is abandon Islam.
Brother Rachid wrote: “ISIL is just one symptom.”
Indeed.
Brother Rachid wrote: “If it disappears other ISILs will be born under different names.   You might ask, ‘Then why does ISIL kill other Muslims?’  The answer is that they consider them infidels not Muslims.”
And what does God consider them?  If you know that God said that the killing of a Muslim is a great sin, why would you risk that and rely on your own inferior understanding as to whether God would consider this person you plan to kill a Muslim?  Does that sound like Islam?
Brother Rachid wrote: “Did you know that all four schools of Islam agree that if a Muslim stops praying, he should be asked to repent, and if he does not, he should be killed?  Did you know that Muhammad tried to burn his own companions when they stopped coming to prayers?  So anything that qualifies a Muslim to be an infidel can be a reason for killing him, even neglecting to pray.”
lol And what did God say?  If God sais in the Qur’an that the believers are admonished to get back onto the Path, but your mysterious “schools of thought” say, “No admonishment!  KILL THEM!!” which of these should I take as the truth of my Lord, the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful?  Not ONCE have I encountered a transgressor of faith who possessed even a rudimentary understanding of Islam, and you are no exception.   
Brother Rachid wrote: “If Islam is not the problem then why is it that there are millions of Christians in the Middle East and yet none of them has ever blown up themselves to become a martyr even though they live under the same economy, political circumstances, and even wars.  Why have many Muslims in the west also joined ISIL if Islam is not the reason?   Why have even new converts to Islam have been terrorists?”   
Cutting the Fuse: The Explosion of Global Suicide Terrorism and How to Stop It by Robert Pape offers a wealth of new knowledge about the origins of suicide terrorism and strategies to stop it. Robert A. Pape and James K. Feldman have examined every suicide terrorist attack worldwide from 1980 to 2009, and the insights they have gleaned from that data fundamentally challenge how we understand the root causes of terrorist campaigns today—and reveal why the War on Terror has been ultimately counterproductive. Through a close analysis of suicide campaigns by Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Lebanon, Israel, Chechnya, and Sri Lanka, the authors provide powerful new evidence that, contrary to popular and dangerously mistaken belief, only a tiny minority of these attacks are motivated solely by religion. Instead, the root cause is foreign military occupation, which triggers secular and religious people alike to carry out suicide attacks. ~Amazon.com; book description
Brother Rachid wrote: “Mr. President, if you really want to fight terrorism, then fight it at the root.  How many Saudi Shias are preaching hatred?”
Does the Qur’an preach hatred?   If a militant Christian organization preaches hatred should I then hate Christianity?  Wouldn’t it make more logical sense to go to the source and find out why there is a discrepancy between what these groups say and do and the informal title “Religion of Peace?”
Brother Rachid wrote: “How many Islamic channels are indoctrinating people and teaching them violence from the Qur’an and the hadith?  How many Friday sermons are made against the west, freedom, and democracy?  How many Islamic schools are producing generations of teachers and students who believe in jihad, martyrdom and fighting the infidels?   
And finally, how many websites are funded by governments – your allies – that have sheikhs who issue fatwas against basic human rights?  If you want to fight terrorism start from there.  By the way, I do not give my full name because Islam is a ‘religion of peace.’  I’m known around the whole world as ‘Brother Rachid’ and I implore you to take a stand for international human rights and the future of democracy and speak the truth about the real threat that is facing all of us.  Best regards,  Brother Rachid”
Your anti-Islam propaganda, with all of the usual talking points, reeks of indoctrination and a lack of critical thinking into what you claimed to study, Rachid.  Stop going around telling everyone you are a “former Muslim” when you’ve so clearly never had any idea what Al-Islam really is.
Tony Boyd - First of all, thanks for taking the time and the effort it took to respond to my request. So one of the main things I got from your response was the ISIL is to Al-Islam what the KKK and to a slightly lesser extent, Westboro Church is to true Christianity?  Also there was a couple sections that I was not totally clear on. One of them was a little hard to find so I will have to bring that up later. But here is the one I did find. I had a hard time wrapping my mind around what the relationship between the kidnapping of Jewish women and whether or not it was supposed to be done or it was okay because there was a shortage of Islamic women...?: Brother Rachid wrote: “And by the way, three of Muhammad’s wives were Jewish girls he kidnapped from his raids upon the religious minorities, just as ISIL is doing today.”
Islam was the religious minority of that time. The Jewish tribes had the backing of the resources of the powerful pagan Meccans that they sold the Muslims out for, remember?
Muhammad Rasheed - Yes, it's a group of militants responding to the war machine, the members of which happen to subscribe to Islam individually. Exactly like the original KKK, they are guerrilla militants fighting against a bigger force using whatever methods they can to secure victory... and they don't care if they violate the tenants of their religion to do it either.
The Westboro Church folk aren't in that category. They function more like those picketing house wives who resented our generation being bussed out to their schools.
Tony Boyd - Sorry I hit the enter button before I was finished with my original post. I included the Westboro Church because of what I feel to be their many un-Christian-like so-called Christian acts.
Muhammad Rasheed - Yeah, but in the case of the terrorist groups, the war part of it is the major factor. The KKK formed and destroyed Reconstruction efforts, led a successful guerrilla terror strike against occupying Northern troops until they withdrew, reclaimed all of their abandoned plantation lands, and pretty much returned us to slavery with the slightly better jim crow/sharecropping package.
Muhammad Rasheed - The KKK was a response to war -- representing a regroup and change of battle tactics designed to rescue their preferred way of life -- that repeated itself on the middle eastern war torn sands of those countries.
Muhammad Rasheed - Also having in common the fact that neither militant group were composed of members who were morally strong enough to live up to high ideal battle tactics of their individual religions.
Tony Boyd - That does shed quite a bit of light. For the many out there looking for an understanding of the why of it all, Brother Rachid's rant gives a lot of easily acceptable explanation. I have come to believe strongly in the concept of there being three sides to every story, yours, mine and the truth. That's why I decided to seek a second, hopefully knowledgeable, opinion.
Tony Boyd - Did you see my question about the kidnapped Jewish women?
Muhammad Rasheed - There's nothing he said in this clip that didn't reflect the same ole GOP FoxNews talking points we've been hearing since 2001, other than the "I'm a former Muslim" part that is supposed to provide an artificial weight.
Muhammad Rasheed - Under Islam's battle rules, you don't kill the innocent non-combatants. So when they took out those tribes, they absorbed the remaining children and women into their own community. Some they enslaved, some they freed, some they married/adopted, depending on the whim of the people involved.
Tony Boyd - So kind of like when some African tribes have been attributed with slavery when it was later considered to be more like indentured servitude and they could earn their freedom?
Muhammad Rasheed - There is no permanent chattel slavery class under Islam. In fact, based on how the Qur'an, the prophet, and the prophet's best friends (who later became the First Four Rashidun Caliphs of Islam), slavery was just an opportunity to help get your soul right by freeing the enslaved. The one slave the prophet ever had he freed, adopted and made his legal heir (tell me again about ISIL following the prophet's example "in detail?"). The wealthiest of his friends would go around freeing slaves every Friday and stuff like that. And the concept of the Golden Rule applied to slaves, too, so most people who cared about their religion found it easier economically just to free them anyway rather than attempt to uphold the old slave system since Islam insisted you clothe them, feed them, and provide for them no different than you would provide for yourself and your children.
In the Qur'an, God says if your slave asks you for permission to enable him to buy his freedom, you are obligated to grant him that opportunity.
Tony Boyd - So what's your theory on how organizations like ISIL and the KKK come to the conclusions they do about their respective religions? How do they decide violence, murder, and their other heinous acts are prescribed for by their religion? My guess is that they decide within themselves what they want it to be and then go about recruiting and brainwashing others into agreeing with their interpretation.
Muhammad Rasheed - Tony Boyd wrote: "So what's your theory on how organizations like ISIL and the KKK come to the conclusions they do about their respective religions? How do they decide violence, murder, and their other heinous acts are prescribed for by their religion?"
They don't. No one thinks about that stuff when they are responding to the war machine. They grab their weapons, have a meeting about the best way to attack, and go do it. During the blood thirst of battle they get ugly and full of hatred based... not on their religions... but on their traditional feelings and hyped up emotions around whoever they are fighting.
Muhammad Rasheed - During the quiet moments in between violent skirmishes is where they attempt to justify the atrocities they committed. "Bah! Those n1ggers aren't really people any way." "Death to the enemies of Allah!" They just make it up so they can sleep at night.
Tony Boyd - Yeah but before they gather for the meeting there is some kind of rallying point, some commonality. Some of those idiots ready to kill and die never had the nerve before they were bolstered by bigger idiots, in my opinion.
Muhammad Rasheed - Tony Boyd wrote: "Yeah but before they gather for the meeting there is some kind of rallying point, some commonality."
In both cases that would be the greater war machine that threatens their way of life by an outside force they have zero respect for.
Tony Boyd - So you're saying the militancy comes before the whitewashing of their actions with religion?
Muhammad Rasheed - Yes, that's 100% my entire point, and why Rachid is wrong.
Muhammad Rasheed - If it were otherwise, then from the beginning ISIL would adhere to the battle rules of Islam. They absolutely do not. Therefore the military aspect of the group is paramount to them, and any "Islam" is a distant after thought/lip service.
Tony Boyd - Okay. I see your point. I guess it seems that the religion came before the militancy to me because by the time I (and maybe its the same for others) hear about the atrocities, they've been whitewashed already.
Muhammad Rasheed - Tony Boyd wrote: "Okay. I see your point. I guess it seems that the religion came before the militancy to me because by the time I (and maybe its the same for others) hear about the atrocities, they've been whitewashed already."
Well, if you simply don't know then these people can say whatever. They SEEM like what you think of when you hear the word "Islam" or "Muslim," right? But if you don't know what Islam is really about... and why would you if that's not your thing?...then they become the face of it. And when ignorant and hateful "former Muslims" echo the same nonsense, for literally the exact same reasons that a Sarah Palin would -- it just reinforces what you thought.
By contrast, even though I am not a Christian I KNOW Christianity. I know what the teachings are, and what makes a Christian and what doesn't make a Christian. And I don't have a problem discerning a "good" one from a "bad" one. So when some atheist jackass wants to slander the entire faith because of what European colonialists did in the distant past, or what some breaking scandal from a modern mega-church pastor did, I know for a fact that he's just talking out of his ass and only thinks he's expressing a truth.
Muhammad Rasheed - Rachid is only presenting it that way because of his narrow-minded, anti-Islam propaganda train. How can you say they are following the prophet in "every detail" and yet know for a fact -- based on his claims of having studied Islam for 20 years -- that they aren't following the prophet's battle field example?
Does "every detail" mean something different now when new Christians say it, or just this retard?
Tony Boyd - Guess he doesn't deal in semantics?
Muhammad Rasheed - lol In Rachid's clip he made a very big show of pointing out that the ISIL members meticulously shape up their facial hair in the very way they felt the prophet did because they wanted to make SURE they followed the prophet's example in "detail."
That's not semantics. That's an attempt at brainwashing the listener.
Muhammad Rasheed - He deliberately wants the president to believe that every single act they commit it following the prophet's example in "detail."
That's the every point of his clip. That Islam is fundamentally evil, and if Obama REALLY wants to solve the "real problem" he's going to have to stamp out Islam itself once and for all.
Tony Boyd - Brainwashing, all too common a tool. The fact that I know that makes me more and more cynical.
Tony Boyd - "That's the every point of his clip. That Islam is fundamentally evil, and if Obama REALLY wants to solve the "real problem" he's going to have to stamp out Islam itself once and for all." - I interpreted it to mean all the "bad" Muslims but I guess I don't think in terms of genocide.
Muhammad Rasheed - Look at it this way:
Being a Muslim is ALLLL about getting into paradise. Everybody knows that. If I'm really following the prophet's example in strict detail, then why wouldn't I do all of the stuff that represented the Good Deeds that would count towards getting into heaven? Why would I waste all that time trimming facial hair but literally ignore the good deed/bad deed part?
Muhammad Rasheed - Tony Boyd wrote: "I interpreted it to mean all the "bad" Muslims but I guess I don't think in terms of genocide."
I don't think he necessarily meant genocide, just a campaign to get rid of the religion itself. The whole point of his message is that Muslims are supposed to follow the prophet's example, and ISIL members are supposed to be doing that, therefore ALL Muslims are ISIL. That we're all terrorist because we subscribe to a fundamentally terrorist religion. That's his point.
Tony Boyd - Hey, it makes sense to me but maybe Brother Rachid was taught from a different Quran?
Muhammad Rasheed - lol
Muhammad Rasheed - Everybody uses the same Qur'an. Every single sect.
Tony Boyd - Ha! I was being facetious suggesting his Qur'an must have been the one with the violence and killing in it.

Number of Days Spent Ducking the Candid & Courageous Conversation: 132,860

Muhammad Rasheed - PET PEEVE #8:
Ben Murphy wrote: "Malcolm X encouraged black people to kill white people..."
Malcolm encouraged black people to defend themselves against attacks from white people during the era of lynchings. That's a bit different than what you just invented. Why is it not okay for American blacks to defend themselves against terror attacks, but it's okay for whites to carpet bomb whole nations after terrorist attacks? Hm?
It's pretty clear that they want me to just lie there on the ground and take their abuse; don't resist as they put that noose around my neck and drag me through the back roads hanging off of their F-150. Anyone that tells me not to just take it and fight back is a villain to them. I have a serious problem with that. That's why they keep associating Malcolm with Magneto. They hate the idea of me resisting their psychopathic abuse. HATE IT.
Can you not see what's wrong with that? You know you would fight back if someone did all of that to you. Why is it not okay for me to fight you back when you are at your craziest? Is it because you consider me the Bad Guy whether I'm fighting back or not?
What's WRONG with you???
Muhammad Rasheed - I think my favorite part is whenever I post up a status that specifically asks black people a question, every white guy I know practically breaks his arm off trying to hurry and offer up his 2-cents, but there's crickets under THIS status.
Muhammad Rasheed - Interesting.
Muhammad Rasheed - I just want to understand it. Was MLK's version of defending himself (by stopping punches with his face) more comfortable to you?
Brett Barton - I got opinions. I'm still on the Ray Rice arguments.
Muhammad Rasheed - "Fight us BACK?! Now see here, Mr. X... you're going a little overboard. We don't like all of this talk of you trying to stir up the Nigras like they have the right to treat us like they are equals. No, no, no. That's devil talk. You must be some kind of villain like in the funny books."
Brett Barton - I'm confused. You definitely had that ready to paste at any response
Muhammad Rasheed - That wasn't a response.
Muhammad Rasheed - What does Rice's drunken domestic abuse have to do with this topic?
Muhammad Rasheed - THAT'S the response to your post.
Brett Barton - Nothing really. I'm usually the token responding white guy. I've been on that.
Muhammad Rasheed - I was still inside of my own head with that monologue.
Muhammad Rasheed - Brett Barton wrote: "I'm usually the token responding white guy."
Not since about early 2012.
Muhammad Rasheed - In fact, you've been kind of ghost lately. I assumed caught up in family stuff.
Brett Barton - About Malcolm in the middle. I agree with the fight back. Black, white, indifferent.
A few exceptions apply. Which kinda brings Ray Rice back into the conversation.
Muhammad Rasheed - Brett Barton wrote: "I agree with the fight back. A few exceptions apply. Which kinda brings Ray Rice back into the conversation."
You agree with blacks fighting back when attacked by whites, but with a few exceptions that are linked to the Rice controversy? At this point... in an attempt to connect these dots... it seems like you are saying black men shouldn't fight back if attacked by their white female fiances.
Brett Barton - Not at all.
Don't fight a female period( black or white/other).
Defend yourself if you are in danger.
I'm fairly sure a large man can detain a woman without punching her out Mike Tyson style.
She didn't have a knife or frying pan and couldn't really inflict any more than surface level damage.
Muhammad Rasheed - He was a drunk asshole. That's both the long and short of it. I'm not interested in team sports, in football, nor in domestic abuse -- that's why my Timeline was absent of any mention of that topic. My bottom line? "Don't domestically abuse each other and keep your hands to yourselves." It still functions as a distraction from the status post and is irritating me.
Brett Barton - So I won?
Tami Bhuiyan - Ben Murphy is a douche.
Muhammad Rasheed - Brett Barton wrote: "So I won?"
I was already irritated when I came across Ben's Malcolm X comment.
Tell me your opinion of his comment, please. How does that stance fall on you? Can you provide some insight into his opinion's source?
Brett Barton - Encouraging someone to defends oneself isn't the same as kill the other person.
Malcolm had the right thought process in you let then treat you like shit that is what you will be to them.
Tami Bhuiyan - Ladies, chill. Malcolm X did not say one race was better than another's ~ and what exactly are y'all tryna prove here? You're both pretty, now CHILLAX...there is no glory in trying to bring another down.
Brett Barton - Ya hear that Muhammad Rasheed, I'm pretty.
Muhammad Rasheed - I told Ben that he invented that idea, but obviously I was being facetious. Malcolm is usually treated like a villain by your greater demographic, Brett, hence the Magneto thing. My opinion as to why they do it is two fold:
1.) The idea that whites consider black people to be the bad guy race by default, so any thought of "fighting them back" is considered evil because obviously that would make the whites the good guy race by default.
2.) Similar to what Mike expressed regarding the Ferguson case in the 'Treating the Symptom' Note below, whites have culturally made up their mind about who they considered Malcolm X was a long time ago, and only reinforce that opinion over and over and over... like a Japanese sword maker folding over that metal continuously... and nothing will break it. They decided he was a bad guy villain way back when he was still in the NOI under Elijah, and that's where they see him even today, based purely on generational word of mouth passed down. No different than how all of their favorite stereotype jokes get passed along, reinforcing their extremely narrow views of other people and concepts.
This is the opinion of the matter I've been holding on to by virtue of lacking anything closer to truth to replace it with. Basically I'm inviting an opportunity to have the discussion to give me a deeper insight into the matter, assuming one should so exist.
Muhammad Rasheed - Brett Barton wrote: "Ya hear that Muhammad Rasheed, I'm pretty."
Calm down. Tami is in Australia. That's probably the toxins talking.
Muhammad Rasheed - Tami Bhuiyan wrote: "Malcolm X did not say one race was better than another's ~"
This was even further off topic than the Ray Rice thing. She was probably bitten by a taipan.
Ricky Mujica - One thing's for sure, when Malcolm X told people to "Defend themselves by any means necessary", and when black people began to shoot back, the lawn cross burnings came to a sudden halt.
Muhammad Rasheed - "How DARE they shoot back at us??? What has the world come to? That red Nigra has to GO!!!"
Muhammad Rasheed - "Get Hoover on the phone!"
Ricky Mujica - Lol! Exactly!
Brett Barton - Maybe I am open minded, which is strange because..... Well... I'm white and from the south.
I think the greater "fear" is people of different "color" so stigmas and fear inserts itself into the thought process before logic.
Muhammad Rasheed - Expound on that a little further, please.
Brett Barton - Well, fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to the dark side.
Muhammad Rasheed - lol That's not expounding...
Ricky Mujica - Except that in this country, the media perpetuates an irrational fear of the big black male. The news pounds us with that fear constantly. That is why police will shoot a black man with toy gun in a toy store, but is OK with a bunch of white guys carrying submachine guns into a local Chilis.
Muhammad Rasheed - "Aw they don't mean any harm. Dem boys just blowing off a little steam."
Muhammad Rasheed - "When we get off our shift we should buy 'em a beer."
Muhammad Rasheed - "Wait...! is that a black guy lighting a cigarette??? PUT THE GUN DOWN, SIR!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
Muhammad Rasheed - "What...? it's just a ciga--!"
*POP! POP! POP! POP! POP! POP!*
Brett Barton - Honestly, we've had great historical figures have great messages and then some misguided individual(s) will jack up the message and transmogrify it into a monster of it's own that deviated from the message in the first place to create a new agenda
Ricky Mujica - The police are scared to death of "the angry black male". That's why a simple protest in Fergusson is met with the "war powers act" (I'm surprised they didn't bring nuclear weapons), while a real threat like that Bundy idiot is by met without any police action at all.
Brett Barton - I saw an angry black at the movies one time.
Long story short we split the price of the candy....
Khalil MuMinun - That's why we can't afford to concern ourselves with the opinions of those who have bigoted views about our people.
Muhammad Rasheed - That's a good way to get shot by being unconcerned at the irrational fury of the guy who hates your guts and is arming himself to put you in your place once and for all.
Muhammad Rasheed - But whatever. Do you.
Muhammad Rasheed - http://l.facebook.com/l.php...
Muhammad Rasheed - Don't let racism keep you from pursuing your happiness, but don't be foolish and ignore the very obvious dangers of a group who absolutely don't have a problem slapping you in chains and/or killing you because they feel like it.
Brett Barton - "I know nothing"
Muhammad Rasheed - TALK, BRETT! What do you know???
Brett Barton - I zaid NiEN!
Muhammad Rasheed - Damn your oily hide!!! TALK!!!
Brett Barton - Zes visint any of your conzern!
Khalil MuMinun - I actually considered my comment to be a confirmation not contradiction of your post.
My point is that we (Black People) should do what we believe is right and necessary to preserve our life and the integrity of our community. I was not suggesting that we turn a blind eye to those who work to perpetuate the subjugation/exploitation of our people.
I'm with you Bro  :)
Muhammad Rasheed - Oh. Sorry.
I blame that damn Brett...
Brett Barton - So we blame the white guy.
Really?
Muhammad Rasheed - Shut up, you!!!
Brett Barton - Only for about another 364 years. Then that's it.
Muhammad Rasheed - You know you ARE different from these others. [rubs chin thoughtfully]
Maybe you DO have German ancestry.
Muhammad Rasheed - What kind of name is "Barton?"
Brett Barton - Irish ish.
Muhammad Rasheed - What about your mom's side?
Brett Barton - Italian and native and some other stuff
Muhammad Rasheed - Oh. Never mind then. You must just be defective or something.
Muhammad Rasheed - Or maybe the black John Connor reprogrammed you when he sent you back?
Muhammad Rasheed - (probably should've capitalized "black")

Mario's Conversion Revisited - A Dialogue

Violette L. Meier – [shared link] My Muslim friends: What do you think of this? Is this true?


Joel Whatley - Jesus isn't real. That Lie has been proven time and time again. But some people just need something to hold on too!
Violette L. Meier - Are you Muslim Joel Whatley?
Joel Whatley - We all were born Muslim sis! smile... I'm striving... I had lived a lie my whole life through Christianity. America can't lie to me anymore.
Violette L. Meier - So as a Muslim, you are saying the Koran lies? It says Jesus is real and to be respected?
Joel Whatley - The bible say's he is one way, but the pictures is nothing like him. So if you change a man looks, name, color, how is that the same man? I believe that the most high sent someone, but its not who they say he is. So yes its a lie! We can make a lie the truth!
Joel Whatley - We can't make a lie the truth!
Violette L. Meier - I think you and I are talking about two different things. I'm a Christian and have never ever beloved that Jesus was white and European looking nor do I believe his orginal name was Jesus. We agree on that standpoint.
Violette L. Meier - So you do think that Jesus (Yeshua/Joshua), is not real?
Joel Whatley - (Yeshua/Joshua) is real not jesus and I no that they teach us they are the same but that not true either.
Muhammad Rasheed - I addressed Mario's video in this Blog Post...
Wait... You Converted to Christianity Because of What the Qur'an Said About Jesus???
Emily Fantasyland Hendrickson - Jesus isn't a lie. Many people have been delivered from many things AND received the holy spirit through Jesus. So whatever the name may be.... Jesus is not a lie or else he would have no spiritual validity. The testimony of the multitudes can't lie.
Emily Fantasyland Hendrickson - The Redeemer is The Christ is The Messiah is The Savior
Emily Fantasyland Hendrickson - and I only read parts of the Quran and didn't study it thoroughly so sorry for posting on your thread bless Allah! As salamu alaykum
Muhammad Rasheed - You can't bless Allah, Emily, He is the One who blesses us.
Emily Fantasyland Hendrickson - we bless God when we send him praises and.... we are blessed. Bless you Muhammad Peace
Muhammad Rasheed - A blessing is the infusion of something with holiness, spiritual redemption, divine will, or one's hope or approval.
God is self-sufficient. We can't infuse Him with anything. lol
Muhammad Rasheed - Peace, Emily.
Emily Fantasyland Hendrickson - But we can make him smile.
Violette L. Meier - I agree that Jesus is not God but I don't believe he was simply an ordinary messenger. He is the messiah.
Violette L. Meier - Psalm 34:1 ESVI will bless the Lord at all times; his praise shall continually be in my mouth.
Muhammad Rasheed - All the prophets were messiahs. It just means "anointed by God" as they all were. I wouldn't consider any of them "ordinary" either, but they were all of one special brotherhood, with a very important mission. The most important one of all.
Violette L. Meier - I know the definition of messiah. Thanks. And I agree that all prophets are annointed but it is my belief that Jesus was not simply a prophet
Muhammad Rasheed - God said otherwise.
Muhammad Rasheed - I believe God.
Emily Fantasyland Hendrickson - I believe if you know God you are loved by God and in that relationship all is fine. Jesus did have a special position that was different than the other prophets. One of my faves is Jon the Baptist . We have individual walks and I would never take away someone's salvation by saying Jesus isn't real, just as I would never say Allah is not the "real" God. Bless us all and we are truly brothers in God, despite the worldly debate behind religions that would divide instead of unify us in Love.
Muhammad Rasheed - Emily Fantasyland Hendrickson wrote: "Jesus did have a special position that was different than the other prophets."
Jesus' job was to instruct the children of Israel in scripture and wisdom, to preach the message of God, and to return on the Last Day to bear witness for/against those he personally preached to during his lifetime. This is the mission of the messengers of God; the same duties they all possess.
There is nothing the Christ was anointed to do that the rest of them weren't also anointed to do. Their job was to preach the message, and demonstrate to you how to do it. That's it.
Emily Fantasyland Hendrickson - That's your point of view. There is much more to it than that in my point of view. But I do agree that he was called to do what we are called to do and gives a great example of that...
Muhammad Rasheed - Emily Fantasyland Hendrickson wrote: "That's your point of view."
That's God's point-of-view. That's why I believe it. That's what God said about His messenger.
Emily Fantasyland Hendrickson - My point of view is also God's point of view. because I have God in me.
Muhammad Rasheed - Then why does your point of view conflict with what God actually said?
Emily Fantasyland Hendrickson - Nothing wrong with either of our views my friend. What matters is The Spirit of God in our Lives.
Muhammad Rasheed - What matters is following the message of God, and not preferring our own vanities over Him.
Muhammad Rasheed - We can say that our point of view is the same as His, but when there is a clear conflict between the two, as in this case, then they both cannot be right. One is Truth, while the other is necessarily falsehood, and surely God speaketh the Truth.
Emily Fantasyland Hendrickson - When you question another Man's faith it is an assault on his relationship with God. I am strong in spirit and can handle that. But you should be mindful of that in future conversations. I wont debate The Words of God with you but only encourage you in The Spirit.
The word kills but the spirit gives life.
We wrestle not with flesh and blood but with principalities and powers.
As humans we have been guilty of keeping God in our religious boxes and texts. Obviously there are different versions written and people are led by FAITH this way or that. God does not have favoritism among man and we cannot deny man the LIFE God has given him and the spirit of God who has ministered to him all of his days.
We wrestle not with flesh and blood but with principalities and powers.
Emily Fantasyland Hendrickson - I didn't mean to quote that twice ...
Emily Fantasyland Hendrickson - But sentiment the same.
Muhammad Rasheed - Emily Fantasyland Hendrickson wrote: "When you question another Man's faith it is an assault on his relationship with God."
I'm not questioning your faith, I'm questioning your understanding of scripture. God is very definite on very specific items, and to ignore it in favor of what feels good to you while saying it is from God despite the clear conflict, is a problem. Do not endanger your soul.
Study to show your own self approved. Scripture is on earth as a mercy from the One who made you. Ignore it at your peril.
Emily Fantasyland Hendrickson - I do study and in doing so I have become more intuned with the holy spirit. Peril... endangered soul.... no, not at all. I can trust what feels good to me without conflict because I know God. Our mindsets are very different. Very.
Muhammad Rasheed - Then why does what you say conflict so often with what God actually said? Explain.
God is not the author of confusion, Emily.
Emily Fantasyland Hendrickson - Praying, worship and being spirit led is more important to me than studying what other men think. Scriptures have taught me I have a direct line to god 100% of every day and he has shown me this as well. I am blessed.
Muhammad Rasheed - You think the scriptures are "what other men think" and are not the message from God?
Muhammad Rasheed - That explains much...
Muhammad Rasheed - Tell me: If you are not comparing what the spirit leads you towards with the message of God itself, then by what criterion do you determine where you are being led by the actual spirit, and towards the actual truth?
If you aren't using the message of God as your guide as it was intended by Him, then what ARE you using?
Emily Fantasyland Hendrickson - Yes the scriptures testify of God, but I put more authority in the spirit of God. The Holy Spirit and counselor that lives in our hearts.
God is not the author of confusion. I agree. I must confess I have felt confusion in the spirit before and in those cases I go to the spirit to find my peace and the confusion leaves me.
I do not speak of scriptures when I speak of "what other men think" I speak of interpretation of scripture and what YOU in particular are telling me. I will not turn to follow you, nor the next man who claims to know the truth. I will continue to walk in the spirit. I really don't understand what your coming down on me for. I don't get your accusations at all. But I will leave that alone. Have a blessed day. Please be done for now on this one..
Violette L. Meier - I don't believe the Qur'an is scripture nor do I believe it is God's word.
Muhammad Rasheed - Emily Fantasyland Hendrickson wrote: "I really don't understand what your coming down on me for. "
"I'm not 'coming down' on you, it's just a discussion.
Muhammad Rasheed - Violette L. Meier wrote: "I don't believe the Qur'an is scripture nor do I believe it is God's word."
What are you basing that believe on?
Emily Fantasyland Hendrickson - I myself will not say that the Quran is not scripture or Gods word... I do think both Christianity and Muslim are very similar. If anyone has found God through either of these religions I am happy about that. I have heard that Christianity and Muslim have different Gods. I don't believe that either. I do think it is all the same God.
Muhammed said: its just a discussion
yes... a discussion where you say: at my peril and at my endangered soul...
To me this is a complete disregard for my beliefs and personal relationship with God.
Emily Fantasyland Hendrickson - sorry I know that grammar is off, but I didn't know how to word it correctly
Muhammad Rasheed - Emily Fantasyland Hendrickson wrote: "Yes the scriptures testify of God, but I put more authority in the spirit of God. The Holy Spirit and counselor that lives in our hearts."
We must master scripture -- really study it with the full force of our God-given intellect -- so that it is written on our hearts. That way it will guide us correctly in all things, so that when we are led by 'the spirit' we will have that guide to compare it to, and know that we are indeed on the right path.
Emily Fantasyland Hendrickson wrote: "I must confess I have felt confusion in the spirit before and in those cases I go to the spirit to find my peace and the confusion leaves me."
Is the conflict truly resolved in those moments, or are you just encouraged not to think about it anymore?
Emily Fantasyland Hendrickson wrote: "I do not speak of scriptures when I speak of "what other men think" I speak of interpretation of scripture and what YOU in particular are telling me. I will not turn to follow you..."
lol I don't want you to follow me, just make sure you know what it is your Lord wants of you based on His Book -- that's why it's here. That way you will know for yourself and no man or spirit can lead you astray. That's what "study to know yourself approved" means.
Emily Fantasyland Hendrickson - Is the conflict truly resolved in those moments, or are you just encouraged not to think about it anymore?
I am encouraged in my spirit to trust the Voice of God that is available to me, just as it was available to those I read about in the scripture. That is more valuable to me, and I put it ABOVE any written text period.
Emily Fantasyland Hendrickson - I do not need to grieve myself about the scripture when the word of god is already in my heart. The scripture is available to me and is interpreted by the spirit within me. It is not the scripture that interprets my spirit. To easily we can be led by MAN when we have that mindset.
Muhammad Rasheed - Emily Fantasyland Hendrickson wrote: "I myself will not say that the Quran is not scripture or Gods word... I do think both Christianity and Muslim are very similar. If anyone has found God through either of these religions I am happy about that. I have heard that Christianity and Muslim have different Gods. I don't believe that either. I do think it is all the same God."
There is only One God.
Emily Fantasyland Hendrickson wrote: "Muhammed said: its just a discussion. yes... a discussion where you say: at my peril and at my endangered soul... To me this is a complete disregard for my beliefs and personal relationship with God."
You are a fellow believer, and when I see you on a path that I know is a dangerous one, I speak up to let you know so, because I do not wish to see you harmed. If I didn't care then I would say nothing.
To worship something other than the One God is the only unforgivable sin, so says the Lord of the worlds. Some people have decided to worship the Christ Jesus, son of Mary and this is a great blasphemy and an insult to the One who made both them and Jesus. Because of this, God took the time to explain His exact relationship with Jesus, so it would be clear. So when folk say other than what is true in this regard, it is a cause for concern, and it does imperil their very soul. Who would I be to withhold that info from you? Once told, it is not my place to MAKE you take it; this is not within my power. But let us agree that I did tell you that God said that Jesus was no more than a messenger, like the messengers who came before him, and the one who came after.
Emily Fantasyland Hendrickson - I worship God
Muhammad Rasheed - Emily Fantasyland Hendrickson wrote: "To easily we can be led by MAN when we have that mindset."
That sounds like you are equating scripture with “written by man" again. We wouldn't know about God at all if He hadn't taken the initiative to tell us about Himself and His message for us.
Muhammad Rasheed - Emily Fantasyland Hendrickson wrote: "I worship God"
And all praise are due to Him and Him alone. May He bless you and may you continue to know His Peace.
Emily Fantasyland Hendrickson - //That sounds like you are equating scripture with 'written by man" again. We wouldn't know about God at all if He hadn't taken the initiative to tell us about Himself and His message for us.//
I think broader than just this. Scripture indeed was written by man. Men who had relationship to the holy spirit. I have a relationship with the Holy Spirit too. Because I am myself, I put that above what another man wrote.
Muhammad Rasheed - Emily Fantasyland Hendrickson wrote: “I think broader than just this. Scripture indeed was written by man.”
Scripture was revealed to man by God and scribed onto paper by man. Man is not the author of scripture.
Emily Fantasyland Hendrickson wrote: “Men who had relationship to the holy spirit. I have a relationship with the Holy Spirit too. Because I am myself, I put that above what another man wrote.”
All believers have relationship with the spirit of the Lord. God anointed a particular group of believers to carry the canon of revealed scripture. None of us are among that group. The scripture are God’s precise instruction to us as to how we may prosper in this life and in the next. To uphold our own Fantasyland vanities above it is to be in grave error. Be careful.
Emily Fantasyland Hendrickson - To disregard the spirit of god that lives in me would be a grave error. I will not live my life second guessing myself. That is exactly where so many religious folks get bound. We are taught to hear the voice of god but then when we start hearing it we get scared its out of alignment of the word. I no longer trip about the opinion of man. We all are on our own paths. The spirit deals with spirit.
I am not in agreement with you that only one group of people hear the word. God is everywhere present at the same time and has been so forever. He is not contained within just one text. Again: we wrestle not with flesh and blood but with principalities and powers in high places. This is about us, our life journey. The scriptures are EXAMPLES. WE are the LIFE.
Yes we do offer words of encouragement to one another when we are led in the spirit and I believe we both did our best with that today. Peace and blessings.
Muhammad Rasheed - Emily Fantasyland Hendrickson wrote: “To disregard the spirit of god that lives in me would be a grave error.”
At no point did I say we should.
Emily Fantasyland Hendrickson wrote: “I will not live my life second guessing myself.”
It would never be necessary if we took the Word of God to be true and let it guide both us and the spirit we are led by.
Emily Fantasyland Hendrickson wrote: “That is exactly where so many religious folks get bound. We are taught to hear the voice of god but then when we start hearing it we get scared its out of alignment of the word. I no longer trip about the opinion of man. We all are on our own paths. The spirit deals with spirit.”
The point of scripture is to keep us on the Path of God. Studying it and knowing it will prevent us from being out of alignment in all areas. Recognize that we are influenced and tempted in many directions… including from the spirit realms… and it is for this reason that we compare ALL voices coming in to what God Himself said in His Word. Truth stands out clear from error, and the Word of God is the truth given us as a mercy from our Lord to keep us on the Path. Follow it and we will not go astray. Abandon it, or sit it on the back burner in favor of the other voices calling for our attention without shining the Word of God upon it to be sure of that voice’s authenticity is a great mistake.
Emily Fantasyland Hendrickson wrote: “I am not in agreement with you that only one group of people hear the word.”
Upon what do you base the assurance of your stance? I stand upon the Word of God. What do you stand upon?
Emily Fantasyland Hendrickson wrote: “God is everywhere present at the same time and has been so forever. He is not contained within just one text.”
Your efforts to toss the scripture aside and downplay its mission in our lives does not change the fact that God gave it to us specifically to teach the human being of earth how to attain and maintain his walk upon the Path. That’s what it is for.
Emily Fantasyland Hendrickson wrote: “Again: we wrestle not with flesh and blood but with principalities and powers in high places. This is about us, our life journey. The scriptures are EXAMPLES. WE are the LIFE.”
Do you think the One who made you doesn’t know your life? Do you think the Supreme Creator of everything you know wouldn’t know to put together the best guide for you to attain that which you didn’t even know you needed to attain? God is the One who gifted you your life, and in His mercy, He also provided the instructions as to how you can live it most abundantly. Will you not heed it?
Emily Fantasyland Hendrickson wrote: “Yes we do offer words of encouragement to one another when we are led in the spirit and I believe we both did our best with that today. Peace and blessings.”
May the Peace & Blessings of God be upon you, Emily.

Dwayne Langley - I wouldn't even say "Muslims need to become Christian"* I'd just say "Muslims need to AT LEAST read their own book!!!"
Violette L. Meier - I base my belief on my reading of it Muhammad Rasheed but I respect that you believe it. If those teachings make you a better man, be blessed in them. God has inspired many parts if the Quran so some of it I do regard as scripture but many parts of it I do not believe they are God but man. But as for me and my house we serve God and adhere to the gospel of Jesus the Christ. I find more peace and God's presence in my scriptures, the Bible.
Violette L. Meier - @Emily Fantasyland Hendrickson I agree with you 100%. The scripture is there to teach, correct, train in righteousness etc. All scripture is inspired by God but written by men. We must not worship the scripture and not the God that inspired it. God speaks to us all not just to those who wrote down their inspiration. God dwells within us and we must listen to the Holy spirit which guides us.
Violette L. Meier - God is never the cause of confusion.
Emily Fantasyland Hendrickson - I never understood when one believer feels the need to question the validity of anothers belief. They should be happy about that other persons relationship to the divine, not look for ways to falsify it. It happens a lot with religious people I have found. There is too much fear, self doubt and thoughts of unworthiness in religion. God does not want that for us. He wants us to know that we are OK and that all is fine! There is no reason to know God and be full of angst about our relationship with him. When we are full of angst, that is the confusion we should recognize. When we go to God, The Spirit WILL guide us and ALWAYS keep us on the right track if we are listening. If another BELIEVER happens to think that "voice" is the devil or another "spirit" because it wasn't written in the scripture, all I can do is bless them and let them go on their merry way. I do not understand the religious sometimes I swear. They spend a lot of time worrying about what other believers think and want to have authority over their mindsets. You will never be in proper alignment with God if other people are telling you what you need to believe. The most important thing is to Know God for yourself... Muhammad Rasheed, I just want to say that from the beginning of this conversation I told you that I knew God and for the entirety of the rest of it you were questioning my beliefs. I am not upset because I know that it is not uncommon. I have had conversations like this before, but I would like you to think about that. It is somewhat silly. I did not once devalue your walk with God, everything I had to say was in defense to your accusations that I do not believe in the "correct" way.
p.s. You will probably come back and say that you did not ever say that you accused me of not believing correctly, but your line of questioning does imply that you think there is something wrong with my way of thinking.
Muhammad Rasheed - @Violette and Emily…
Did you forget the topic of this thread? Did you not watch the Mario Joseph link? As a Muslim, I was invited to this thread by a Christian to share my thoughts here. Any reasonable adult would recognize this as a comparative religion discussion, and would logically expect one to ensue.
Under normal circumstances I do not focus on the differences between the Abrahamic faiths since we are all People of the Book, and guardians of the revealed scripture of the One God. My wife is Christian, and it is best to focus on those items we have in common. But on neutral ground on the Internet such as this thread, in which the differences between the faiths are open in a philosophical discussion framework, I will freely share my thoughts about it. I fail to see the reason why you two are being over-sensitive, and pretending that I was the vile interloper who intruded and attacked the two innocent Christian maidens. Nothing of the sort happened here. Not once did I get personal, or “question your beliefs” as you are so fond of repeating, but kept the conversation completely within the confines of philosophical doctrine which I perhaps foolishly assumed you were prepared for. Instead I am met with this silly, defensive sensitivity as you two clutch the proverbial pearls and faint.
Granted, the religion of Al-Islam is known for its uncompromising monotheism, while Pauline Christianity is significantly less so. As the youngest of the three faiths in the set, Islam is free of the usual pagan taint that mankind often saddles the message with in the ages old ritual, and arguing for its principles can come across as aggressive. But that is only the nature of this particular religious comparison study (and perhaps a lack of a certain level of tact on my part), and is by no means a personal attack by me onto you.
I cannot speak for anyone else you may have had religious conversations with; I can only argue from the stand point of my own understanding of scripture and faith. It seems to me that you are coloring the discussion with past experiences with other folk instead of taking the points I raise at face value. I find that fundamentally unfair, and even consider it narrow-minded.
As to the nature of the subject at hand, it is a matter of faith. We believe what we believe because we have faith it is so. In the matter of comparing Christianity to Islam, it is a bit different – the difference between choosing one over the other is about 25% faith, and 75% facts of historical record. For example I believe the One God of Abraham is exactly who He claims to be, so by extension, I believe in His books, His messengers, the unseen spirit, and the inevitability of Judgment Day. Everything we know about those things comes from His revealed scripture on earth, actual physical copies of text handled by the hands of men over the course of millennia. As such, there is a well-documented fact of record as to where these texts came from, who had them, who scribed them, who copied them from which, etc, etc. As God said, truth stands out clear from error, and the historical record of the book of God shows this to be the case. It is one thing to believe in aspects of existence that no mere human has the ability to prove or disprove, but another matter altogether to stubbornly believe in things that the physical earthly record reveal to be false, especially when that historical reveal actually lines up with what God Himself said in the final revelation of the canon of sacred scripture.
The bottom line is that pointing out facts, and pointing out that a fellow believer is choosing to believe in something that not only is far off from those facts, but in direct conflict with what the Lord Most High said about them, is a matter of duty from one believer to the next. Only the pagan is indifferent as to whether you believe in a falsehood or not. What scripture have they to guide them onto the correct path? It is their trademark that they just make it up as they go along willy-nilly as they lack guidance. The believers in the One God are different, for they are blessed with a most perspicuous Guide, a mercy from the Lord of all the worlds. The believers are obligated to point out where their fellows have strayed so that they have the opportunity to return to the Path. The believers have no excuse for treating the Word of God as merely a light suggestion, willy-nilly making up their faith as they go, in a vulgar imitation of the pagan.
The people of the One God are above this behavior, and should act accordingly.

Peeling Back the Myths & Rhetoric to Reveal the Historical Facts

Late in 2012, I came out of the Lincoln movie with two historical mysteries to solve:How did the two parties switch places regarding the South, white supremacy, and civil rights? In Lincoln’s day, a radical Republican was an abolitionist, and when blacks did get the vote, they almost unanimously voted Republican. Today, the archetypal Republican is a Southern white, and blacks are almost all Democrats. How did American politics get from there to here?One of the movie’s themes was how heavily the war’s continuing carnage weighed on Lincoln. (It particularly came through during Grant’s guided tour of the Richmond battlefield.) Could any cause, however lofty, justify this incredible slaughter? And yet, I realized, Lincoln was winning. What must the Confederate leaders have been thinking, as an even larger percentage of their citizens died, as their cities burned, and as the accumulated wealth of generations crumbled? Where was their urge to end this on any terms, rather than wait for complete destruction?The first question took some work, but yielded readily to patient googling. I wrote up the answer in “A Short History of White Racism in the Two-Party System“. The second turned out to be much deeper than I expected, and set off a reading project that has eaten an enormous amount of my time over the last two years. (Chunks of that research have shown up in posts like “Slavery Lasted Until Pearl Harbor“, “Cliven Bundy and the Klan Komplex“, and my review of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ article on reparations.) Along the way, I came to see how I (along with just about everyone I know) have misunderstood large chunks of American history, and how that misunderstanding clouds our perception of what is happening today.
Who really won the Civil War?The first hint at how deep the second mystery ran came from the biography Jefferson Davis: American by William J. Cooper. In 1865, not only was Davis not agonizing over how to end the destruction, he wanted to keep it going longer. He disapproved of Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, and when U. S. troops finally captured him, he was on his way to Texas, where an intact army might continue the war.
That sounded crazy until I read about Reconstruction. In my high school history class, Reconstruction was a mysterious blank period between Lincoln’s assassination and Edison’s light bulb. Congress impeached Andrew Johnson for some reason, the transcontinental railroad got built, corruption scandals engulfed the Grant administration, and Custer lost at Little Big Horn. But none of it seemed to have much to do with present-day events.
And oh, those blacks Lincoln emancipated? Except for Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver, they vanished like the Lost Tribes of Israel. They wouldn’t re-enter history until the 1950s, when for some reason they still weren’t free.
Here’s what my teachers’ should have told me: “Reconstruction was the second phase of the Civil War. It lasted until 1877, when the Confederates won.” I think that would have gotten my attention.
It wasn’t just that Confederates wanted to continue the war. They did continue it, and they ultimately prevailed. They weren’t crazy, they were just stubborn.
The Lost Cause. At about the same time my American history class was leaving a blank spot after 1865, I saw Gone With the Wind, which started filling it in like this: Sadly, the childlike blacks weren’t ready for freedom and full citizenship. Without the discipline of their white masters, many became drunks and criminals, and they raped a lot of white women. Northern carpetbaggers used them (and no-account white scalawags) as puppets to control the South, and to punish the planter aristocrats, who prior to the war had risen to the top of Southern society through their innate superiority and virtue.
But eventually the good men of the South could take it no longer, so they formed the Ku Klux Klan to protect themselves and their communities. They were never able to restore the genteel antebellum society — that Eden was gone with the wind, a noble but ultimately lost cause — but they were eventually able to regain the South’s honor and independence. Along the way, they relieved their beloved black servants of the onerous burden of political equality, until such time as they might become mature enough to bear it responsibly.
That telling of history is now named for its primary proponent, William Dunning. It is false in almost every detail. If history is written by the winners, Dunning’s history is the clearest evidence that the Confederates won. [see endnote 1]
Margaret Mitchell’s 1936 novel had actually toned it down a little. To feel the full impact of Dunning-school history, you need to read Thomas Dixon’s 1905 best-seller, The Clansman: a historical romance of the Ku Klux Klan. Or watch the 1915 silent movie made from it, The Birth of a Nation, which was the most popular film of all time until Gone With the Wind broke its records.
The iconic hooded Klansman on his horse, the Knight of the Invisible Empire, was the Luke Skywalker of his day.
The first modern war.The Civil War was easy to misunderstand at the time, because there had never been anything like it. It was a total mobilization of society, the kind Europe wouldn’t see until World War I. The Civil War was fought not just with cannons and bayonets, but with railroads and factories and an income tax.
If the Napoleonic Wars were your model, then it was obvious that the Confederacy lost in 1865: Its capital fell, its commander surrendered, its president was jailed, and its territories were occupied by the opposing army. If that’s not defeat, what is?
But now we have a better model than Napoleon: Iraq.
After the U.S. forces won on the battlefield in 1865 and shattered the organized Confederate military, the veterans of that shattered army formed a terrorist insurgency that carried on a campaign of fire and assassination throughout the South until President Hayes agreed to withdraw the occupying U. S. troops in 1877. Before and after 1877, the insurgents used lynchings and occasional pitched battles to terrorize those portions of the electorate still loyal to the United States. In this way they took charge of the machinery of state government, and then rewrote the state constitutions to reverse the postwar changes and restore the supremacy of the class that led the Confederate states into war in the first place. [2]
By the time it was all over, the planter aristocrats were back in control, and the three constitutional amendments that supposedly had codified the U.S.A’s victory over the C.S.A.– the 13th, 14th, and 15th — had been effectively nullified in every Confederate state. The Civil Rights Acts had been gutted by the Supreme Court, and were all but forgotten by the time similar proposals resurfaced in the 1960s. Blacks were once again forced into hard labor for subsistence wages, denied the right to vote, and denied the equal protection of the laws. Tens of thousands of them were still physically shackled and subject to being whipped, a story historian Douglas Blackmon told in his Pulitzer-winning Slavery By Another Name.
So Lincoln and Grant may have had their mission-accomplished moment, but ultimately the Confederates won. The real Civil War — the one that stretched from 1861 to 1877 — was the first war the United States lost.
The missed opportunity.Today, historians like Eric Foner and Douglas Egerton portray Reconstruction as a missed opportunity to avoid Jim Crow and start trying to heal the wounds of slavery a century sooner. Following W.E.B. DuBois’ iconoclastic-for-1935 Black Reconstruction, they see the freedmen as actors in their own history, rather than mere pawns or victims of whites. As a majority in Mississippi and South Carolina, and a substantial voting bloc across the South, blacks briefly used the democratic system to try to better their lot. If the federal government had protected the political process from white terrorism, black (and American) history could have taken an entirely different path.
In particular, 1865 was a moment when reparations and land reform were actually feasible. Late in the war, some of Lincoln’s generals — notably Sherman — had mitigated their slave-refugee problem by letting emancipated slaves farm small plots on the plantations that had been abandoned by their Confederate owners. Sick or injured animals unable to advance with the Army were left behind for the slaves to nurse back to health and use. (Hence “forty acres and a mule”.) Sherman’s example might have become a land-reform model for the entire Confederacy, dispossessing the slave-owning aristocrats in favor of the people whose unpaid labor had created their wealth.
Instead, President Johnson (himself a former slave-owner from Tennessee) was quick to pardon the aristocrats and restore their lands. [3] That created a dynamic that has been with us ever since: Early in Reconstruction, white and black working people sometimes made common cause against their common enemies in the aristocracy. But once it became clear that the upper classes were going to keep their ill-gotten holdings, freedmen and working-class whites were left to wrestle over the remaining slivers of the pie. Before long, whites who owned little land and had never owned slaves had become the shock troops of the planters’ bid to restore white supremacy.
Along the way, the planters created rhetoric you still hear today: The blacks were lazy and would rather wait for gifts from the government than work (in conditions very similar to slavery). In this way, the idle planters were able to paint the freedmen as parasites who wanted to live off the hard work of others.
The larger pattern.But the enduring Confederate influence on American politics goes far beyond a few rhetorical tropes. The essence of the Confederate worldview is that the democratic process cannot legitimately change the established social order, and so all forms of legal and illegal resistance are justified when it tries.That worldview is alive and well. During last fall’s government shutdown and threatened debt-ceiling crisis, historian Garry Wills wrote about our present-day Tea Partiers: “The presiding spirit of this neo-secessionism is a resistance to majority rule.”
The Confederate sees a divinely ordained way things are supposed to be, and defends it at all costs. No process, no matter how orderly or democratic, can justify fundamental change.
When in the majority, Confederates protect the established order through democracy. If they are not in the majority, but have power, they protect it through the authority of law. If the law is against them, but they have social standing, they create shams of law, which are kept in place through the power of social disapproval. If disapproval is not enough, they keep the wrong people from claiming their legal rights by the threat of ostracism and economic retribution. If that is not intimidating enough, there are physical threats, then beatings and fires, and, if that fails, murder.
That was the victory plan of Reconstruction. Black equality under the law was guaranteed by the 14th Amendment. But in the Confederate mind, no democratic process could legitimate such a change in the social order. It simply could not be allowed to stand, and it did not stand.
In the 20th century, the Confederate pattern of resistance was repeated against the Civil Rights movement. And though we like to claim that Martin Luther King won, in many ways he did not. School desegregation, for example, was never viewed as legitimate, and was resisted at every level. And it has been overcome. By most measures, schools are as segregated as ever, and the opportunities in white schools still far exceed the opportunities in non-white schools.
Today, ObamaCare cannot be accepted. No matter that it was passed by Congress, signed by the President, found constitutional by the Supreme Court, and ratified by the people when they re-elected President Obama. It cannot be allowed to stand, and so the tactics for destroying it get ever more extreme. The point of violence has not yet been reached, but the resistance is still young.
Violence is a key component of the present-day strategy against abortion rights, as Judge Myron Thompson’s recent ruling makes clear. Legal, political, social, economic, and violent methods of resistance mesh seamlessly. The Alabama legislature cannot ban abortion clinics directly, so it creates reasonable-sounding regulations the clinics cannot satisfy, like the requirement that abortionists have admitting privileges at local hospitals. Why can’t they fulfill that requirement? Because hospitals impose the reasonable-sounding rule that their doctors live and practice nearby, while many Alabama abortionists live out of state. The clinics can’t replace them with local doctors, because protesters will harass the those doctors’ non-abortion patients and drive the doctors out of any business but abortion. A doctor who chooses that path will face threats to his/her home and family. And doctors who ignore such threats have been murdered.
Legislators, of course, express horror at the murder of doctors, just as the pillars of 1960s Mississippi society expressed horror at the Mississippi Burning murders, and the planter aristocrats shook their heads sadly at the brutality of the KKK and the White Leagues. But the strategy is all of a piece and always has been. Change cannot stand, no matter what documents it is based on or who votes for them. If violence is necessary, so be it.
Unbalanced.This is not a universal, both-sides-do-it phenomenon. Compare, for example, the responses to the elections of our last two presidents. Like many liberals, I will go to my grave believing that if every person who went to the polls in 2000 had succeeded in casting the vote s/he intended, George W. Bush would never have been president. I supported Gore in taking his case to the Supreme Court. And, like Gore, once the Court ruled in Bush’s favor — incorrectly, in my opinion — I dropped the issue.
For liberals, the Supreme Court was the end of the line. Any further effort to replace Bush would have been even less legitimate than his victory. Subsequently, Democrats rallied around President Bush after 9/11, and I don’t recall anyone suggesting that military officers refuse his orders on the grounds that he was not a legitimate president.
Barack Obama, by contrast, won a huge landslide in 2008, getting more votes than any president in history. And yet, his legitimacy has been questioned ever since. The Birther movement was created out of whole cloth, there never having been any reason to doubt the circumstances of Obama’s birth. Outrageous conspiracy theories of voter fraud — millions and millions of votes worth — have been entertained on no basis whatsoever. Immediately after Obama took office, the Oath Keeper movement prepared itself to refuse his orders.
A black president calling for change, who owes most of his margin to black voters — he himself is a violation of the established order. His legitimacy cannot be conceded.
Confederates need guns.The South is a place, but the Confederacy is a worldview. To this day, that worldview is strongest in the South, but it can be found all over the country (as are other products of Southern culture, like NASCAR and country music). A state as far north as Maine has a Tea Party governor.
Gun ownership is sometimes viewed as a part of Southern culture, but more than that, it plays a irreplaceable role in the Confederate worldview. Tea Partiers will tell you that the Second Amendment is our protection against “tyranny”. But in practice tyranny simply means a change in the established social order, even if that change happens — maybe especially if it happens — through the democratic processes defined in the Constitution. If the established social order cannot be defended by votes and laws, then it will be defended by intimidation and violence. How are We the People going to shoot abortion doctors and civil rights activists if we don’t have guns?
Occasionally this point becomes explicit, as when Nevada Senate candidate Sharron Angle said this:

You know, our Founding Fathers, they put that Second Amendment in there for a good reason and that was for the people to protect themselves against a tyrannical government. And in fact Thomas Jefferson said it’s good for a country to have a revolution every 20 years. I hope that’s not where we’re going, but, you know, if this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies and saying my goodness what can we do to turn this country around? I’ll tell you the first thing we need to do is take Harry Reid out.

Angle wasn’t talking about anything more “tyrannical” than our elected representatives voting for things she didn’t like (like ObamaCare or stimulus spending). If her side can’t fix that through elections, well then, the people who do win those elections will just have to be intimidated or killed. Angle doesn’t want it to come to that, but if liberals won’t yield peacefully to the conservative minority, what other choice is there?Gun-rights activist Larry Pratt doesn’t even seem regretful:

“The Second Amendment is not for hunting, it’s not even for self-defense,” Pratt explained in his Leadership Institute talk. Rather, it is “for restraining tyrannical tendencies in government. Especially those in the liberal, tyrannical end of the spectrum. There is some restraint, and even if the voters of Brooklyn don’t hold them back, it may be there are other ways that their impulses are somewhat restrained. That’s the whole idea of the Second Amendment.”

So the Second Amendment is there not to defend democracy, but to fix what the progressive “voters of Brooklyn” get wrong.
It’s not a Tea Party.The Boston Tea Party protest was aimed at a Parliament where the colonists had no representation, and at an appointed governor who did not have to answer to the people he ruled. Today’s Tea Party faces a completely different problem: how a shrinking conservative minority can keep change at bay in spite of the democratic processes defined in the Constitution. That’s why they need guns. That’s why they need to keep the wrong people from voting in their full numbers.
These right-wing extremists have misappropriated the Boston patriots and the Philadelphia founders because their true ancestors — Jefferson Davis and the Confederates — are in poor repute. [4]
But the veneer of Bostonian rebellion easily scrapes off; the tea bags and tricorn hats are just props. The symbol Tea Partiers actually revere is the Confederate battle flag. Let a group of right-wingers ramble for any length of time, and you will soon hear that slavery wasn’t really so bad, that Andrew Johnson was right, that Lincoln shouldn’t have fought the war, that states have the rights of nullification and secession, that the war wasn’t really about slavery anyway, and a lot of other Confederate mythology that (until recently) had left me asking, “Why are we talking about this?”By contrast, the concerns of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and its revolutionary Sons of Liberty are never so close to the surface. So no. It’s not a Tea Party. It’s a Confederate Party.
Our modern Confederates are quick to tell the rest of us that we don’t understand them because we don’t know our American history. And they’re right. If you knew more American history, you would realize just how dangerous these people are.
__________________________________
Endnotes__________________________________
[1] The other clear evidence stands in front of nearly every courthouse in the South: statues of Confederate heroes. You have to be blind not to recognize them as victory monuments. In the Jim Crow era, these stone sentries guarded the centers of civic power against Negroes foolish enough to try to register to vote or claim their other constitutional rights.
In Away Down South: a history of Southern identity, James C. Cobb elaborates:

African Americans understood full well what monuments to the antebellum white regime were all about. When Charleston officials erected a statue of proslavery champion John C. Calhoun, “blacks took that statue personally,” Mamie Garvin Fields recalled. After all, “here was Calhoun looking you in the face and telling you, ‘Nigger, you may not be a slave but I’m back to see you stay in your places.’ ” In response, Fields explained, “we used to carry something with us, if we knew we would be passing that way, in order to deface that statue — scratch up the coat, break up the watch chain, try to knock off the nose. … [C]hildren and adults beat up John C. Calhoun so badly that the whites had to come back and put him way up high, so we couldn’t get to him.”

[2] The vocabulary of this struggle is illuminating. A carpetbagger was a no-account Northerner who arrived in the South with nothing more than the contents of a carpetbag. A scalawag was a lower-class Southern white who tried to rise above his betters in the post-war chaos. The class-based nature of these insults demonstrates who was authorizing this history: the planter aristocrats.
For a defense of the claim that the aristocrats intentionally led the South into war, see Douglas Egerton’s Year of Meteors: Stephen Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, and the Election that Brought on the Civil War.
[3] Though Congress had to find other “high crimes and misdemeanors” for their bill of impeachment, Johnson’s betrayal of the United States’ battlefield victory was the real basis of the attempt to remove him.
[4] Jefferson Davis and the Confederates also misappropriated the Founders. It started with John Calhoun’s Discourse on the Constitution and Government of the United States, published posthumously in 1851, which completely misrepresented the Founders and their Constitution. Calhoun’s view (that the Union was a consortium of states with no direct relationship to the people) would have made perfect sense if the Constitution had begun “We the States” rather than “We the People”.
Calhoun disagreed with Jefferson on one key point: All men are not created equal.
Modern conservatives who attribute their views to the Founders are usually unknowingly relying on Calhoun’s false image of the Founders, which was passed down through Davis and from there spread widely in Confederate folklore.

Not a Tea Party, a Confederate Party by Doug Muderhttp://weeklysift.com/2014/08/11/not-...

See Also:http://www.addictinginfo.org/2014/09/...

Wait... You Converted to Christianity Because of What the Qur'an Said About Jesus???

Muhammad Rasheed – [watched video clip of Mario Joseph explaining his conversion]



Changing Tracks - Mario Joseph Conversion Logic
Mario Joseph - “But he asked me, ‘Who is Jesus?’ I was preaching He is not God, to know who is He, I read the entire Koran once again…”
Muhammad Rasheed – I don’t understand what he was looking at as he was reading it.  He didn’t have to do that weird numerology word-shuffle game… the Qur’an is very perspicuous and exact when explaining who exactly was Jesus.
1.)    4:171 - O People of the Book! Commit no excesses in your religion: Nor say of Allah aught but the truth. Christ Jesus the son of Mary was (no more than) a messenger of Allah…
2.)    5:17 - In blasphemy indeed are those that say that Allah is Christ the son of Mary.
3.)    5:75 - Christ the son of Mary was no more than a messenger; many were the messengers that passed away before him. His mother was a woman of truth. They had both to eat their (daily) food. See how Allah doth make His signs clear to them; yet see in what ways they are deluded away from the truth!
4.)    9:31 - They take their priests and their anchorites to be their lords in derogation of Allah, and (they take as their Lord) Christ the son of Mary; yet they were commanded to worship but One Allah: there is no god but He.
5.)    5:116 - And behold! Allah will say: "O Jesus the son of Mary! Didst thou say unto men, worship me and my mother as gods in derogation of Allah'?" He will say: "Glory to Thee! never could I say what I had no right (to say). Had I said such a thing, thou wouldst indeed have known it. Thou knowest what is in my heart, Though I know not what is in Thine. For Thou knowest in full all that is hidden. 
6.)    3:84 - Say: "We believe in Allah, and in what has been revealed to us and what was revealed to Abraham, Isma'il, Isaac, Jacob, and the Tribes, and in (the Books) given to Moses, Jesus, and the prophets, from their Lord: We make no distinction between one and another among them…”
There is no ambiguity within the Qur’an as to whether Jesus is a divine son-entity or not; God is quite clear on this:  Jesus was one of the brotherhood of prophet-messengers of God and nothing more.  I do not understand what this dude was seeing as he was reading it, and why these extremely clear verses explaining who Jesus was and how his true relationship to God and the other messengers completely went over his head like that. 
Mario Joseph - “When I read it, the name of Prophet Mohammed I found in Koran 4 places, but the name of Jesus I found in Koran 25 places.  There itself, I was a little confused.  Why does the Koran give more preference to Jesus?”
Muhammad Rasheed – This is a case of the dude skipping right past the actual message to manufacture a fake message that simply isn’t there.  [in addition to the 20+ times He says “Jesus,” there is an additional 12 times when God calls him “Christ” instead.]  Why does God mention Jesus so much, and his mom?  Because one of the duties of the revealed scripture, in addition to delivering the good news, the warning, and confirming & fulfilling the messages that came before, is to correct those areas that the previous guardians allowed their guardianship to slip and introduce errors into the message.  And there were many grave errors that needed to be corrected because of Paul’s usurpation of the Gospel.  What did God say? 
“3:55 - Behold! Allah said: "O Jesus! I will take thee and raise thee to Myself and clear thee (of the falsehoods) of those who blaspheme…”
God promised His messenger that He would clear him of the falsehoods those folk had said about him, and there was one more revelation of God on its way for this purpose… one that the Christ prophesized was coming to Comfort the masses.  That’s why God mentions Jesus so much in the Qur’an, to show him in his correct place as one of the many prophet-messengers and how he and his message fit within that brotherhood, and to explain that he was only a human being like the rest of them.  To fulfill His promise, and surely Allah is the best of those who fulfill their promises!
Mario Joseph - “And the second thing: I could not see any women’s name in Koran…”
Muhammad Rasheed – Of all the women mentioned in the Qur’an, Mary was the only one that was being worshiped.  God’s mention of her was no different than why He was mentioning her son… to explain what her true role was, as a righteous parent and mother to the messenger of God.  Her story was similar to that of other righteous believing mothers like Samuel’s mom (peace be upon the righteous servants of Allah).   Showing Mary’s story so that the wise and intelligent reader would see the clear similitude should put her in the correct perspective within scriptural history, instead of where those sects of Christians go when they decided to blaspheme and worship her. 
Mario Joseph - “So I was very curious to know ‘Why does the Koran say all these things?’  About Mariam, Holy Koran chapter 3 verses 34 onwards says that Mary was born without original sin…”
Muhammad Rasheed – There is no ‘original sin’ concept in Islam, that’s why.  People are born pure, and only taint that purity when they reach the age of discretion and then deliberately choose sin once they know better.
Mario Joseph - “…she never committed any sin in her life…”
Muhammad Rasheed – I believe Mary died in righteousness as a believer and will be assured of paradise, but the Qur’an didn’t say that she never committed any sin in her life.  Like any other person she probably did sin -- and in her case probably on some minor level -- that she promptly repented of and wiped from her record. 
Mario Joseph - “…she was ever virgin.”
Muhammad Rasheed – The same as above.  Obviously this dude converted to one of the Christian sects where they worship the 'divine virgin Mary' concept.  The real life Mary had lots of kids, including James the Just, leader of the First Church of Jerusalem.
Mario Joseph - “Koran chapter 50 verses 23 says that she went to Heaven with her physical body.  Even the Assumption is written in the holy Koran.” 
Muhammad Rasheed – The Holy Qur’an 50:20-2620) And the Trumpet shall be blown: that will be the Day whereof Warning (had been given). 21) And there will come forth every soul: with each will be an (angel) to drive, and an (angel) to bear witness.22) (It will be said:) "Thou wast heedless of this; now have We removed thy veil, and sharp is thy sight this Day!"23) And his Companion will say: "Here is (his Record) ready with me!"24) (The sentence will be:) "Throw, throw into Hell every contumacious Rejecter (of Allah)!-25) "Who forbade what was good, transgressed all bounds, cast doubts and suspicions;26) "Who set up another god beside Allah: Throw him into a severe penalty."
I have no idea what he’s supposed to be talking about.  As you can see, the verse he mentioned is in the middle of a section talking about the Day of Judgment, not Mary at all.  So did he read the Qur’an as he claimed?   At this point it seems like he did not… there is way too much clear/obvious stuff that he completely missed on his hurried way to grab whatever he preferred to grab… like he instead just read some skewed, cherry-picked and altered quotes found on some anti-Islam website. 
Mario Joseph - “And then about Jesus when I read chapter 3 verses 45 to 55 verses, there are 10 points which the Koran makes about Jesus.  The first thing Koran says, […] the Arabic word which means ‘Word of God,’ and the second thing […] which means ‘Spirit of God.’  And the third is […] which means ‘Jesus Christ.’  So Koran gives the name for Jesus:  Word of God, Spirit of God, Jesus Christ.”
Muhammad Rasheed – And when God said Jesus was the Word, Spirit and the Christ it was always while He was emphasizing that he was also only a human messenger, who had to eat food like any other mortal.  That he was no different than any other of the messengers in that brotherhood.  He said that they all should be treated the same because their message and role was all the same.  That means that whatever Jesus was, they all were.  That whatever name of praise God gave the one, it related to them all.  God called Abraham “friend.”  Why?  Because of Abraham’s uncompromising and pure worship of the One God.  Was he unique in this?  No!  They all shared that same trait and was why they were chosen.  Their jobs as messengers were to preach only the Word that God revealed to them.  That means they all were in the role of “Word of God.”  All of them.  They were all the righteous, mortal messengers of God with a very specific job to do:  Preach the Word as it was given to them, instruct mankind in scripture and wisdom, give those who love doing good the glad tidings of the good news, and the warning of the inevitability of the Last Day to those who love sowing mischief in the earth. 
Mario Joseph - “And then Koran says that Jesus spoke when he was very small, like 2 days old, after his birth.  He began to speak.  Koran says that Jesus created a live bird with mud.  He took some mud, formed a bird; when he breathed into it, it became a live bird.  So I think that he can give life.  He gave life to mud, clay.  And then Koran says that Jesus cured a man born blind and a man with leprosy, etc.  Curiously, the Koran says that Jesus gave life to dead people; Jesus went to heaven…”
Muhammad Rasheed – It’s weird that he missed all the times when God said that it was through His permission that Jesus, and other miracle performing prophets like Moses, were able to do these things solely by the leave of God and His permission.  That they did not accomplish these things without God.  He seems to lack a fundamental comprehension/insight into what the text is saying.
Mario Joseph - “He is still alive and He will come again.”
Muhammad Rasheed – 2:154 - And say not of those who are slain in the way of Allah: "They are dead." Nay, they are living, though ye perceive it not. 
It is clear that the martyrs, and anyone of a righteous station even above that, like the messengers of God themselves, bypass Judgment altogether and go straight to paradise when they leave this earth.  The rest of us who will wait to be judged will indeed be dead, but not these others.  They are the A+ believers who will arrive early in paradise on a First Class flight.  And all the prophets will come again to perform the final duty of their prophethood. They’re all coming back.  Jesus is not unique in this.
Mario Joseph - “When I saw all these things in Koran my thinking what the Koran says about Mohammed.  You know, according to the Koran, Prophet Mohammed is not [lists miracles Jesus was allowed to perform].  So there is a lot of difference between these two prophets.  I didn’t call Jesus, God, you know.   My idea was “He’s a prophet, but he is a prophet greater than Mohammed.”
Muhammad Rasheed – God said none of them are greater than the others; that we are not to give any preference over any other because they had the same role, and all gave the message of God to mankind.  Why would the fact that some were able to perform miracles through God’s permission over others be the determining factor as to which ones were the greater of them anyway?  If anything it should be – considering their job was messenger – it should be how many people accepted the message during their lifetimes.  If the primary skill needed in your job function is the Persuasive Argument, then wouldn’t it stand to reason that how many people you were able to sway to your philosophical position should be the marker for who is great or not in that particular job?  Between Muhammad, Jesus, and Moses (peace be upon the three of them), two of them performed miracles all the time, and one did not.  One of the miracle workers had no more than 20 followers in his lifetime, while the other miracle worker was the guardian over the most rebellious, obnoxious group of “followers” in recorded history, who needed to constantly be checked over and over and over again.  The one prophet who did not perform miracles of the three was one of those legendary king figures who was able to unite several savage warring tribes into one cohesive nation of dedicated and devoted believers who would’ve done ANYTHING for him.  So much so, that when he left the earth, their grief was so intense that the First Caliph had to remind them that it was not the prophet they worshiped, but Allah.   So of any truly objective criterion – and of course if such a contest was allowed by God – which of those three would realistically be considered the greatest prophet?  I mean really.
Mario Joseph - “If my teacher says that the Word of God is Creator, which means Jesus is Creator…”
Muhammad Rasheed – I’m not following his logic on that one.  God created reality with His Word.  God also used His Word to instruct mankind on how to follow His Path.  He anointed the brotherhood of messengers for this task, and instructed them in His Word to give to mankind.  Each prophet knew the Word, and showed mankind how to walk it; each of them was the Word in the flesh – both orators and performers of the Word of God.   How the dude found “Jesus is Creator” out of that clear message in the Qur’an is like a funky David Blaine slight-of-hand trick that makes me wonder if even he understood it himself.

Studying to Show Your Own Self Approved

Tom Luth – [shared link] Gotta love religion.



Baptist Pastor Writes Gay Author - article link
Tom Luth - Sadly, this IS the new Christinity. Not like th eone I grew up with.
Ed Gauthier - And they wonder why religion-wise so many people stay snugly up on the fence. Because raving loons like this are so often lurking below.
Muhammad Rasheed - Tom Luth wrote: "Gotta love religion. Sadly, this IS the new Christinity. Not like the one I grew up with."
Tom this isn't religion, nor is it the 'new Christianity.' It's THAT guy, and his poor understanding of what he is supposed to believe. His opposite Christian is also around, but they aren't as newsworthy.
Robert Waldo Brunelle Jr - It is not religion's fault that this man is a terrible person.

Muhammad Rasheed - Believe it or not, there's actual learning involved in religion. You have to actually study to find out what your Lord wants of you, practice the tenants until they become second nature, and continuously recalibrate yourself back to the standard that represents the Path of Righteousness. The study involved is actually intense, multi-layered, and isn't always easy, just like the deeper subjects in school. And also just like school, some folk are better at grasping it and excelling in the practical application of it than others. "What you get out of it depends on what you put in," and you can't be lazy with it.
And why would you be since your immortal soul is at stake?
Muhammad Rasheed - Why is the guy who got a solid D average in Computer Science the mouthpiece for the field? Obviously he's a dumbass. Should I let the dumbest guy in Computer Science have me "sit on the fence" as far as whether I should commit to it or not? Does that even make sense? I recognize that CS would be good to ME if I applied myself and took it seriously. What does his stupidity have to do with me?
Muhammad Rasheed - Religion is exactly the same.
Richard A. Tucker - Muhammad, believe what you want to but the fact remains that this has NEVER been an isolated case and since religion is too often what the followers say it is then there's no escaping stupid and even dangerous people espousing religion. That said there are those who apply their faith in a responsible manner, so maybe bashing religion in the general sense is not helping. At the same time, let's count the headlines haters like this cretin get every year and STILL the religious insist they are THE way. It's like this notion that pseudo environmentalists insist we need to save the planet. We NEED to save ourselves from what we do to our environment that makes it less reliable for us to sustain our lives. In short, we have to stop crapping where we eat, and the faithful need the humility and wisdom they claim to abide by. Both are aspects we need to embrace to survive. Today we have legions of literalists who, oddly enough, ignore 90-99% of their "good" word. That's not an accident.
Muhammad Rasheed - @Richard... My point is that the information that religion has is within the texts, no different than the information you need for your life is in the body of texts that make up other fields. If the individuals fail to study to show themselves approved in the eyes of their Lord, then the problem isn't religious -- no more than the failing grades of those who don't do the work in math are the fault of math. The laziest students, the weakest students, always seem to be the prominent mouthpiece for this particular subject, and in my opinion, those on the outside looking in that judge the field based on the dumbasses are being unreasonable to me. They wouldn't do that in any other field, so why would they do it in this one? Brunelle's cartoon message above is purest, uncut Common Sense, but people seem to want to be dumb when it comes to this topic.
I don't get it.
Richard A. Tucker - I think the idea that religion is common sense defies common sense. Religion doesn't make it a point to grow and expand. It's rigidly set. While some liberal faiths like Unitarian Universalists embrace change and grow (as do a few other religions) mostreligions are mired in dogma that doesn't come close to meeting the needs of our changing world. That's where the problem really lies. The irony there is most prophets, not Jesus, Mohammed, Moses, none of them adhered to or advocated adherence to dogma. They sometimes supported the rules but more often than not were breaking with them. To see so many people embrace dogma (especially the most limiting and soul crushing ones, usually made up by men and not prophet/teachers) as the way is disheartening.
Tom Luth - I'm not saying this man is a good follower of Christ, just that his views represent the overwhelming majority of the religious right, and all the nuts on talk radio. Like all the idiots that say Rush Limbaugh and Ann COulter are the only true Christians on radio. I think they are insane, but there are far more of them, than there are of me.
Muhammad Rasheed - In the end, it will be only you standing before the Lord being held accountable for what you alone decided to do. God won't ask a single one of them any questions regarding what you did, He will ask only you. Just like in school, no one is going to care what the other people in school did, what matters is did YOU study? Did YOU do the work?
Muhammad Rasheed - Richard A. Tucker wrote: “I think the idea that religion is common sense defies common sense.”
If you will scroll up you will notice that I said the message within Brunelle’s cartoon was one of Common Sense.
Richard A. Tucker wrote: “Religion doesn't make it a point to grow and expand.”
Within the three organized religions of Abraham, paradise has 7 levels, each more favorable than the one below. This is because religion is based upon a merit system. God point blank told the believers to compete with each other in righteousness. As a member of a capitalist society you should be quite aware that good spirited competition leads directly to growth and expansion. Look at the examples of theocratic societies of the past that grew into glorious Golden Ages of legendary status.
Richard A. Tucker wrote: “It's rigidly set. While some liberal faiths like Unitarian Universalists embrace change and grow (as do a few other religions) most religions are mired in dogma that doesn't come close to meeting the needs of our changing world.”
I disagree. Religions are all about human behavior, and our behaviors have never changed. The scripture, and the religions built around them, will always be relevant. There may briefly be individual aspects that aren’t used much during a particular era, but what goes around comes around, and it is probably still relevant in another corner of the world.
Richard A. Tucker wrote: “That's where the problem really lies.”
No, the problem comes from those who not only choose to not take the faiths seriously, but they spread a viral message that we don’t need religion at all that catches on, spreading sin like mayo from a lack of accountability. The second worst problem is when the believers have a poor understanding of what it is they are supposed to believe.
Richard A. Tucker wrote: “The irony there is most prophets, not Jesus, Mohammed, Moses, none of them adhered to or advocated adherence to dogma.”
What are you basing that on? An old Facebook meme?
Richard A. Tucker wrote: “They sometimes supported the rules but more often than not were breaking with them.”
More often than not, when the prophets received their Prophethood Commissions, they lived in a time when pagan, Godless , sin infested the land, and there were many laws worth tearing down in order to save the people from hellfire. But once they won, or moved away and settled their own tribes and villages, they established a firm but fair civilization based around the scripture revealed through them. Their very jobs was to instruct us in wisdom and scripture and to civilize us so we would prosper in this world and in the next. Can you be civilized and act right without dogma? Without it we’ve proved to be savages.
Richard A. Tucker wrote: “To see so many people embrace dogma (especially the most limiting and soul crushing ones, usually made up by men and not prophet/teachers) as the way is disheartening.”
The real problem is the embracing of after-the-fact dogmas that usurped the message of God. His dogma is perfectly fine to embrace.
Richard A. Tucker - Muhammad, you're own embracing of dogma is your deal. I can't help but wonder why is it this infinite creator of the universe needs men, some rather out of touch men, to write his "inspirations"? The common sense thing I'm referring to is the notion that: 1. inspiration is not holy writ. The very definition of inspiration is that it's an idea derived from another source, not a literal copying transcribing of anything. In short it's a person's version of something, not the original. 2. God, as you know it was not shaped by an unconscious assessment of your world. It was taught to you by other humans who have worked diligently to make that notion our prevailing cultural (note that) influence (the very reason Buddhists, Taoists, Hindus, a legion of pagans and literally hundreds of religions before today's upstarts even existed did not follow this faith, well, until some segment of their population were often forced to, or risk their death for not doing so, so said the "Christian", "Muslim", tyranny of your choice, conquerers). If logic offends you there's nothing I can do about it. But, religions have had millennia to get it right and they have utterly failed. If it's not the followers than it has to be their faith that is also less than perfect. If there is a judgement and I'm cast down, well, one lifetime is a ridiculous amount of time to get it right for a reward of eternal bliss anyway. That will not affect my compassion for others here and now, or my desire to do right by them. The first thing being I won't judge them by the measure of any religion. I will continue to work to help those who need it. So, believe as you will. I know why you do and will not think less of your humanity for it.
Andrew Brel - Absolutely right. You has gots ta love that religion.
Muhammad Rasheed - Richard A. Tucker wrote: “Muhammad, you're own embracing of dogma is your deal.”
lol Actually it’s everybody’s deal. Even the anti-religious folk believe in their own types of dogma depending on what moves them.
Richard A. Tucker wrote: “I can't help but wonder why is it this infinite creator of the universe needs men, some rather out of touch men, to write his ‘inspirations?’”
Those kinds of fundamental level questions can be cleared up simply by reading His message. There’s no need to wonder, Richard.  He talks about that stuff in His Book.
Richard A. Tucker wrote: “The common sense thing I'm referring to is the notion that: 1. inspiration is not holy writ. The very definition of inspiration is that it's an idea derived from another source, not a literal copying transcribing of anything. In short it's a person's version of something, not the original.”
‘Inspiration’ is when you are moved to create something because a spark for the idea of it came from an outside source; the creation is still yours. Certain chapters of my Monsters 101 graphic novel series were inspired by some of the findings within the works of Graham Hancock, for example. But when God (or His angel) addresses a person, and in modern terminology, downloads God’s Words into the guy, and instructs him to preach that message to others, that isn’t ‘inspiration.’ That’s REVELATION. That’s the sacred scriptural revelation of God, sent to us as a mercy and a guide. Man is not the author of revelation, God is.  Right now the canon of revelation is closed. There will be no more. The message of God on earth is complete.
Richard A. Tucker wrote: “2. God, as you know it was not shaped by an unconscious assessment of your world. It was taught to you by other humans…”
Other believers introduced the message of the One God to me, just as other concepts of diabolical origin and influence are also introduced to people. In this case, I reached a point where I actively, consciously, and objectively began a comparative religion study, where I determined that Al-Islam was the best religion for me, and decided to embrace and take it seriously.
Richard A. Tucker wrote: “…who have worked diligently to make that notion our prevailing cultural (note that) influence (the very reason Buddhists, Taoists, Hindus, a legion of pagans and literally hundreds of religions before today's upstarts even existed did not follow this faith…”
The Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are the most recent religions wrapped around a message that the One God Himself said has been always preached to mankind from Himself and previous messengers. The message of God is older than any pagan religion, which are all upstarts and falsehoods. The very first homo sapien was not given paganism by his Lord.
Richard A. Tucker wrote: “…well, until some segment of their population were often forced to, or risk their death for not doing so, so said the "Christian", "Muslim", tyranny of your choice, conquerers).”
There is no compulsion in religion. Individuals who decide to attack another based on what they decide to believe are not following the faiths, but their own tyrannical desires. This is another reference to the Common Sense item in Brunelle’s cartoon above, that is only dismissed by those who carry around a dogma that rejects Common Sense.
Richard A. Tucker wrote: “If logic offends you there's nothing I can do about it.”
At no time is misinformation considered “logic.” I suggest you reconsider your stance.
Richard A. Tucker wrote: “But, religions have had millennia to get it right and they have utterly failed.”
Religions represent our ideals. Whether we “get it right” is an individual walk, not a collective walk. As an individual, if you decide to find the tenants of the faith tiresome and you want to do what you want to do instead of striving to reach towards the ideals, then again Common Sense dictates that it is not the religion that has failed, but the individual making the weak claim that they subscribe to that religion.
Richard A. Tucker wrote: “If it's not the followers than it has to be their faith that is also less than perfect.”
It is 100% the followers who are at fault when they deliberately decided to do things that are frowned upon within the religious system. Again this is an item that should reasonably be considered Common Sense, but as I mentioned earlier, grasping the principles of religion actually requires study & effort… study & effort that I personally find missing from those who are against religion, as you are demonstrating here.
Richard A. Tucker wrote: “If there is a judgement and I'm cast down, well, one lifetime is a ridiculous amount of time to get it right for a reward of eternal bliss anyway.”
Well, that’s one way of looking at it. Another way would be to recognize that there is nothing involved within the system that you are not capable of doing yourself, you just need to study it. Throw out the false information that you were given by those anti-religious folk who have worked diligently to make those false notions our prevailing popular cultural trend as of late, and get smart on this stuff so you will get to experience the eternal bliss.
Richard A. Tucker wrote: “That will not affect my compassion for others here and now, or my desire to do right by them. The first thing being I won't judge them by the measure of any religion. I will continue to work to help those who need it. So, believe as you will. I know why you do and will not think less of your humanity for it.”
No offense, but in this thread I find your understanding and insight into religion and its principles to be very weak at best, and grossly misinformed at worst. Pretty much everything you’ve said about it, that you somehow think represents “logic,” isn’t reflected in the texts at all, but is straw man-like dogma that is passed around as truth by the atheist/agnostic community... opinions that I often debate against online. It’s impossible to take an uninformed – but pretending to be informed – position seriously. Again I ask that you reconsider your stance, take the time to actually learn what the religions’ message and it’s true history actually is, learn to discern the difference between the tenants of the faith versus the willful non-religious actions of individual members of that faith, and you will be much closer to being able to speak on this topic with the form of authority and insight you think you possess now.
Peace.
Richard A. Tucker - Well, of course you think my logic is weak. You have not faced this issue as I have after a life of researching (I'm 55 and was supposed to be the priest of the family) not just my own efforts to try to embrace faith but the failure of any to impart on me the wisdom of embracing their own. You go to a lot of effort to apply what is the same circular "logic" I've seen my entire life and it boils down to faith being what it is because people want it too badly to actually look at what it is, which is stories they believe because they want to. Faith is the very absence of facts. That's fine, but it is illogical. That's neither good nor bad but I can't embrace something just because somebody said I should. I also personally find the wonder of this universe to be more profound on a daily basis than anything any book of mythology has ever come close to inspiring. I gave up the search for faith about a decade ago. I still like some of the stories but I know that's all they are or ever will be with some considerable certainty. Just because some history is gleaned from those texts doesn't prop up the entire story as it's been told. I do not say that lightly. By the way, it's people like yourself that make religion such a torturous chore. Not only can you not simply believe and be content with that, but you have to make a point of denigrating anyone who doesn't follow you blindly. Worse, your utter arrogance in assuming I haven't researched this is exactly why you have lost all sense of the humility your faith instructs you to have. Your hubris is as appalling as I expect it to be. Yet another "believer" who puts his ego in front of his alleged faith. Keep that up, please.
Andrew Brel - 'Religion is a torturous chore' you say. But its so much worse than that.
Muhammad Rasheed - Richard A. Tucker wrote: “Well, of course you think my logic is weak. You have not faced this issue as I have after a life of researching (I'm 55 and was supposed to be the priest of the family) not just my own efforts to try to embrace faith but the failure of any to impart on me the wisdom of embracing their own.”
I apologize, but nothing you’ve typed thus far has demonstrated any kind of religious research.
Richard A. Tucker wrote: “You go to a lot of effort to apply what is the same circular 'logic' I've seen my entire life and it boils down to faith being what it is because people want it too badly to actually look at what it is, which is stories they believe because they want to.”
I don’t know what you were supposed to be “boiling down,” but this comment is a straw man that doesn’t address my point at all. My point is that it is education, and the will to perform, that determine the difference between a “good religious person” from the guy represented in Tom’s link. You have personally decided that scripture isn’t real because you ‘feel’ it isn’t real. Pretending that that is a logical reason to disbelieve is actually illogical.
Richard A. Tucker wrote: “Faith is the very absence of facts. That's fine, but it is illogical.”
I disagree. Faith is the belief that the facts are out there to find. This concept is actually the driver for technological progress. If we didn’t have faith that the things we strive for can be obtained, we would never progress towards anything.
Richard A. Tucker wrote: “That's neither good nor bad but I can't embrace something just because somebody said I should.”
It depends on who the “somebody” is. If that “somebody” happened to be omniscient, omnipotent, and 100% had your best interests to heart, and created from scratch the reality you find yourself within, then you would be a fool not to embrace what this being said. On the other hand, if some person no more informed into the mysteries of life than you are told you that God isn’t real, the bible’s stories aren’t true, religion is a fiction and an oppressive crutch that has failed humanity, and you decided to believe it, that would make you a fool.
Richard A. Tucker wrote: “I also personally find the wonder of this universe to be more profound on a daily basis than anything any book of mythology has ever come close to inspiring.”
That “book of mythology” said that the universe came into being at a definitive origin point in the distant past. The atheist community assumed that was a lie because they go around assuming that religion is falsehood and doesn’t know what it’s talking about, so of course they theorized an eternal universe that never had a beginning. As of today, Big Bang Theory is the prevailing model for the universe’s origins, with all facts supporting what religion said from the beginning.
book of mythology: 1atheism: 0
Richard A. Tucker wrote: “I gave up the search for faith about a decade ago.”
This will be your undoing.
Richard A. Tucker wrote: “I still like some of the stories but I know that's all they are or ever will be with some considerable certainty.”
Remember religion has been right about the origins of the universe even though the atheists, with their fake ‘logic,’ found the concept counter-intuitive. Your blind faith that the claims of sacred scripture are not true, don’t have a leg to stand on.
Richard A. Tucker wrote: “Just because some history is gleaned from those texts doesn't prop up the entire story as it's been told.”
So you admit that some of the history in it that was able to be scientifically verified is also true, along with the aspect of reality that is fundamentally most important… the origins of the universe.
book of mythology: 2atheism: 0
Richard A. Tucker wrote: “I do not say that lightly.”
Really? Then based on the current scorecard, what basis are you using for your faith that religion and scripture aren’t true?
Richard A. Tucker wrote: “By the way, it's people like yourself that make religion such a torturous chore.”
I don’t mind. I find the Godless to be ideologically worthless and crushingly narrow-minded. I guess that makes us even.
Richard A. Tucker wrote: “Not only can you not simply believe and be content with that…”
This is a hypocritical comment. Do you ever find it possible to simply disbelieve in religion without taking obligatory potshots at religious status posts? Hm? For my part, the religions represent my sacred belief system which is very personal, and very important to me. When someone says something that’s clearly wrong, like you’ve done in this thread, why wouldn’t I say something? Should I sit back quiet and let people poison society with bullshit false information about the faith? If someone says something clearly wrong and crazy about things you care about – passionately but uninformed – do you sit quiet and just let them? Why? I consider that cowardice.
Richard A. Tucker wrote: “…but you have to make a point of denigrating anyone who doesn't follow you blindly.”
For one, if you confine your comments to those on which you are actually informed, you would be less likely to feel “denigrated” when someone checks you for spreading misinformation. Second, why would I want someone to follow me? I’m an advocate for the religions, not a pope or whatever.
Richard A. Tucker wrote: “Worse, your utter arrogance in assuming I haven't researched this is exactly why you have lost all sense of the humility your faith instructs you to have.”
1.) The religion says XYZ2.) Richard said religion said ABC3.) Muhammad pointed out the religion actually said XYZ4.) Richard has a fit and proclaims Muhammad is arrogant5.) wtf?
Richard A. Tucker wrote: “Your hubris is as appalling as I expect it to be.”
I am a believer in the One God of Abraham and my opinion comes from my study into the message He has provided to guide mankind. You are a disbeliever; one of the unrepentant hellbound who said my Lord isn’t real based on your blind faith and feelings. What is in anything you say on the topic that I should respect or take seriously?
Richard A. Tucker wrote: “Yet another 'believer' who puts his ego in front of his alleged faith. Keep that up, please.”
The Authority that backs my “hubris” is no less than the Lord of all the worlds. Tell me what is backing your words, please, that I may compare their quality.
Richard A. Tucker - I'm not reading this one and yes, from the first few lines I see your insults aimed at me and the same old circular illogical stuff. Go on your way arrogant one. I'm done.
Muhammad Rasheed -


Richard A. Tucker - One thing you might note, is you have no authority over me and neither does your god.
Richard A. Tucker - And your ego proves there is no god as you believe. Way to go.
Muhammad Rasheed - You will find out otherwise on the Last Day. Good luck.
Richard A. Tucker - Can't wait for that cold grave for you either.