"Allah" is not a personal name like Jehovah or YHWH. It just means "god" in Arabic -- like "deus" or "el" in Latin or Hebrew.

Unlike Mormons, Muslims don't claim to be Christians with a different theology so I really don't see why some Christians -- especially evangelicals -- are even concerned with this.

My view is that it's just another turf battle -- to make a different faith the evil "other" as was and still is done to Jews.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/03/2018 10:15PM by anybody.

Religious intolerance.

Anybody, I'm proud of you. You said "some" Christians instead of just [all] Christians!

Ignorance.They think Allah is a name and a different god. They are intolerant as well as ignorant.

bona dea Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Ignorance.They think Allah is a name and a
> different god. They are intolerant as well as
> ignorant.


It is a different God. It's nature, past actions, goals and dictates are not compatible with the Christian God in those same areas. Read God is Not One.

Who gives a sh!t? It's all made up anyway. It's like arguing the difference between Santa and Saint Nick.

St. Nick might cut your head off if you talk about Santa. :)

CateS Wrote:
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> Who gives a sh!t? It's all made up anyway.

I was thinking the very same thing, but as an atheist, I demand that no ideology be spared from criticism, so "islamophobophobia" triggers me, as does any other instance of "religious beliefs must be respected".

So I went the other way and showed it's the pot calling the kettle black.

You demand that "no ideology be spared from criticism" but when people criticize islam then they are "islamophobic".

You dont believe "religious beliefs must be respected" but you are saying that islam shouldnt be disrespected.

You are the pot calling the kettle black.

... "islamophobophobia".

It's the term I coined for the hatred of any criticism to islam, because they call any criticism of islam "islamophobia".

Please understand the difference between "islamophobia" (a term coined by the Ayatollah Khomeini, btw) and "islamophobophobia (coined by myself)

You were just to subtle. Didn't see the double phobia.

dogblogger Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> It is a different God. It's nature, past actions,
> goals and dictates are not compatible with the
> Christian God in those same areas. Read God is Not
> One.

Yes, it is a different god.
And the Jewish god is different from the christian one.
Which isn't really correct anyway, since there isn't a "christian one," there are thousands of different christian "god" concepts.

Lots of Christians have very different concepts of God too, but they are still considered Christians.The God worshipped by Desmond Tutu or Marcus Borg is very different from the God worshipped by Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson. Historically Christians, Jews and Muslims have the same God.There are as many concepts of God as there are people who believe.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/03/2018 11:04PM by bona dea.

Joseph Smith seemed to think "Jesus Christ" was a personal name, as though Jesus' parents were Joseph & Mary Christ.

When he was brain-farting out the BOA, he gave us "King Pharaoh," apparently thinking "Pharaoh" was an actual name instead of a title.

And he also claimed the "mor" element in "Mormon" was English, never bothering to explain why a Nephite's name was borrowing from a language that wouldn't exist until centuries later.

What a comedian.

muslims and christians worship the same god.

muslims do not allow christians living in now muslim countries to call their god by the epithet 'allah', so obviously it is not just 'some christians' who do not like the practice of making the christian 'god' and the muslim 'god' equal under the name 'allah'.

The reason 'some christians' do not like saying that both god's are equivalent is because they are aware that before mohammed was strangled by an angel in a cave and then told to 'recite' what he would hear next, allah was worshipped by arabs as a moon and fertility god, NOT as the creator and father of all.

Dave the Atheist Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> muslims and christians worship the same god.

Maybe as an atheist you should allow Christians and Muslims the courtesy of deciding for themselves who they worship. Just sayin'

Here's the problem with that.

If they (any of the big three monotheistic religions) claim the OT is accurate in any way about a god and their origins, they are the ones cherry picking when they redesign the god. The nature of the OT god is fairly clear (not a very nice fellow).

So, when a Christian denies the commonality of the OT god, it comes across that they are either cherry picking or not aware of the history.

Christians may think that God decided to send a son avatar of himself (or whatever justification to insist it is one godhead). They are NOT disavowing the OT God. Well, guess what that same God was telling a different lineage. Their version which is just as made up as the others.

That said, the god they design tends to reflect the values of the culture. How they emphasize which qualities of God to align with whatever view they have is especially amusing and frustrating to people who view it from the outside.

We all know that religious groups like to subdivide themselves into "better and worse." Christians are Catholics, or Catholics and Orthodox, or Orthodox and Catholics and Protestants, or . . . You get the point. If God ever were to reveal herself to a group of humans, it would only be a matter of time before those humans were arguing over the number of divine freckles and claiming that those who adhered to the wrong description were heretics who must be burned at the stake.

That said, it's easy to go too far in either direction on the question of whether God is one. The Jewish, Christian, and Moslem faiths worship either a single God or perhaps divine cousins. That is true linguistically (The Al in Allah equals the El in El and in Eloheim in the Semitic languages). It is true scripturally, as anyone who has read the Quran knows that it is filled with stories from the Old Testament and even the New Testament. That is why, until the horrific 20th century the Ottomans, Persians and other Moslem groups gave nearly-Moslem status to the "peoples of the book." So the three are very closely related religions.

On the other hand, you have that book God Is Not One, which contends that all the major deities are quite distinct. The author goes way too far. It helps his contention that religious are thoroughly different to include as deistic systems religions that are explicitly atheistic. I mean, Buddhism? Taoism? There is not one reference to God, or a god, in the Taoist classics; and the only schools of Buddhism that speak of gods view them as higher life forms that are still illusory and need to reach self-abnegation through more lifetimes of meditation.

If you strip out the red herrings, meaning non-theistic religions, the rest line up reasonably closely in theology if not in history (where people get involved and screw everything up). The book God Is Not One again takes liberties by insisting that each religion has its own focus, but upon further reflection those foci break down into some variation of the struggle against egocentrism, the need to break out of inward preoccupation and embrace God and/or humans and/or life.

If you start with that premise--that the religions are about the battle against Ever-Demanding Self--rather than the importance of some old dude in the sky who makes everything happen, you can bring back some of the non-theistic religions because they too are concerned with the relationship between the individual and the rest of existence. So really the core of religion is not God per se but what God is supposed to represent, and most religions are reasonably close in their outlooks on that score.

Is that an opinion or a declaration? :)

I'm not in a position to make declarations.

Thanks, you make a good point. Indeed, "Allah" is just the Arabic name for God, including the christian god, and that is why christians in Arabic-speaking countries (where there have been christians since five centuries before the muslims invaded, remember) call the christian god "Allah" instead of God, Dieu, Gott, Deus or whatever. In many other muslim-majority countries, God is also addressed as "Allah".

Unfortunately, in a lot of those countries, muzzies do take offence when chrissies use that name, and in some places they have even gone as far as making it illegal. Yes, prohibiting it by law. Never mind that the name is in their language, their scripture, their prayers and their customs. The muzzies have decided to monopolize the name. In Malaysia this is already the case, other countries are picking up the idea.

https://www.google.be/search?q=christians+cannot+say+allah&rlz=1C1AVSK_nlBE727BE728&oq=christians+cannot+say+allah&aqs=chrome..69i57.5378j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

On the other hand, I have never ever heard any christian, no matter how hard-line, object to muslims or jews using the name "God" while talking about Allah or YHWH in Dutch or English, or using the name "Dios" in Spanish, "Dieu" in French etc. So perhaps things are not so bad yet on your side, in the grand scheme of things?

In the Malaysian tongues, the word for God is "Tulan." "Allah is of course an Arabic import, so it would be at least possible to claim that the word Allah only applies to the Moslem deity.

On your broader point, and mine with regard to the peoples of the book, it is a sad fact that the 200 years since the Napoleonic Wars have been a tragedy for multi-culturalism. Before then there was much more tolerance for different races and religions in the Islamic world, and for ethnic mixing in central and eastern Europe.

When Napoleon invaded Europe, he promised freedom, equality and liberty to everyone. Accordingly peoples, if not governments, thought the French would bring a better civilization. What they got, however, was French oppression. As a result, European peoples became aware of themselves as "nations" and started demanding states coterminal with their national boundaries; the resistance against France was organized as Germans against France, Poles against France, Russians against France. But since Central and Eastern Europe are congeries of mixed languages and ethnicities, the awakening of nationalism meant that minorities increasingly looked like alien and threatening presences that needed to be assimilated, expelled, or destroyed.

The new gospel of national self-determination was exported through imperialism, so that the Turkish uprising against the Versailles agreement was also genocidal towards Armenians, the Arab risings against the imperial powers were anti-Christian, etc. Much of the instability of Eastern Europe between the Great and the Second wars resulted from this now-illegitimate ethnic mixing, a situation that invited extreme solutions. Then came the destruction of India and its loss of Bangladesh and Pakistan, which cost millions of lives. There are echoes of this notion of nation-states today in the anti-immigrant sentiment abroad in Europe and the Us.

The problem is that ethnicity and language are variable, and of the destruction of polities there is no end. Most of the world is mixed, and demanding separation along national lines is a recipe for anarchism. That is one of the curses of the modern world: seeking ethnic purity in a complex world is often a sanguinary effort.

Lot's Wife Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> In the Malaysian tongues, the word for God is
> "Tulan." "Allah is of course an Arabic import, so
> it would be at least possible to claim that the
> word Allah only applies to the Moslem deity.


Nonsense, Malay christians have been using the name Allah for God since many centuries. It doesn't matter what other words they used originally, or for other gods. It is part of their language, culture, religion, scriptures and prayers now, and no-one has the right to take that away from them at a whim.

The fact that the word was imported from Arabic is, of course, wholly irrelevant. If English were stripped of all words of foreign extraction, the language would be dead, deceased, demised and kaput, to use just four words of ancient Germanic, early French, vulgate Latin and modern German origin.

I find that a strangely strident response to an argument I prefaced with the phrase "it would be at least possible to claim. . ."

You are of course correct that languages are constantly borrowing from, and refreshing, each other. But your suggestion that English reliance on German, French, and Latin is comparable to Malay borrowing of Arabic is a stretch.

Why? Because as evident in your implied list of the Spanish "Dios," the French "Dieu," the Latinate "Diety," the Greek "Theos," etc., the European languages are all closely related. In fact, if one applied to Europe the standards that linguists use for, say, China or Africa, the major European languages are all dialects of a single Indo-European (or perhaps two Indo-European) languages. The words were identical to start with, then diverged somewhat, and then sometimes jumped linguistic barriers between related tongues.

Arabic, however, is Semitic while Malay is Austronesian. You won't find any cognates of El/Al in original Malay; nor cognates of Malay religious words in the Semitic languages. So yeah, there is a difference. This fact is not relevant to whether governments should be prohibiting certain ethnic groups from using terms that have become part of their traditions, but Al/El is much more foreign to Malay than the French Dieu" is to the Spanish Dios and the Greek Theos.

And anyone who pays attention to France knows that the French have launched numerous campaigns against words imported from English and other languages. So what Malaysia has done is not as alien to European sensitivities you intimate.

Lot's Wife Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> But your suggestion that English reliance
> on German, French, and Latin is comparable to
> Malay borrowing of Arabic is a stretch.
>
> Why? Because as evident in your implied list of
> the Spanish "Dios," the French "Dieu," the
> Latinate "Diety," the Greek "Theos," etc., the
> European languages are all closely related. In
> fact, if one applied to Europe the standards that
> linguists use for, say, China or Africa, the major
> European languages are all dialects of a single
> Indo-European (or perhaps two Indo-European)
> languages. The words were identical to start
> with, then diverged somewhat, and then sometimes
> jumped linguistic barriers between related
> tongues.
>
> Arabic, however, is Semitic while Malay is
> Austronesian. You won't find any cognates of
> El/Al in original Malay; nor cognates of Malay
> religious words in the Semitic languages. So
> yeah, there is a difference.

But this difference is irrelevant. Languages borrow from other languages and it doesn't matter how closely related or distant they are. English has also borrowed words from the Chinese, native Americans and, in fact, from Malays. Where do you think English words like tea or bungalow come from?


> This fact is not relevant to whether governments should be
> prohibiting certain ethnic groups from using terms
> that have become part of their traditions

Ah, thank you very much. What a relief.


> And anyone who pays attention to France knows that
> the French have launched numerous campaigns
> against words imported from English and other
> languages. So what Malaysia has done is not as
> alien to European sensitivities you intimate.

Not all of Europe thinks like the French. Most countries have a more laid-back attitude. As we say here in Morocco, the English phrase "de rigueur" is usually rendered in French as "le must".

But even the Académie Française does not try to kick out words that have been used for centuries. The Malaysian government, out of the blue, has done just that.

You and I agree on most aspects of this issue.

If I may further muddy the debate ;-), French muslims say "Dieu" when talking to non-muslims (such as an atheist like me). To say Allah would come across as a little bit "islamist", which is understandably out of style at the moment ;-).

It doesn't bother them (and it doesn't bother me).

Tom in Paris

You said that nations were only formed after napoleon's expansion east, and I do disagree with this with concern to western europe. Scotland has been a 'nation' since the 9th century and england as a nation arose much the same time.

Of course, being an island nation does help forge a feeling of 'separateness' from the mainland peoples, which has been felt on these island for over two thousand years. Some peoples we have been 'affiliated' with, but certainly we have had our own identity even before the smaller (now english) kingdoms of mercia, etc, were amalgamated into countrywide 'nations' sharing language, religion, laws and customs.

Portugal and Spain have had the same border, with only minor changes, since the 12th century. By that time, many countries had been established whose names and approximate geography we instantly recognize today: France, Poland, Lithuania and Hungary all date from before the year 1000, and of course Greece and Italy from before the christian calendar.

You guys are missing my point.

I never said "nations" didn't exist until after Napoleon. What I said was that modern "nationalism" did not exist until after Napoleon. In political science and history that is not a controversial proposition.

There are very few homogeneous nations. The usual examples are Iran, Japan, France: those are countries where the vast majority of the people speak the same language, worship the same way, and share major cultural elements. Asserting that each nation should have its own state works in those places; it can even prove a strong reinforcement to the state and society. But those are very unusual cases.

The examples you raise make my point. Scotland is a nation? Well, yes. But Scotland is not a state. Scotland is a nation in a multi-national state, the UK. Wars were fought over whether Scotland should be part of the British state. Ireland is a better example. It was once considered a nation, then a nation among the British nations, but then as notions of nationalism changed the question arose whether it was one nation or two. Are the Catholics and the Protestants a single nation that should fall within a single state or two nations that deserve two states? it was quite recently that the violence on that point diminished.

Poland, Lithuania and Hungary are even better examples of the nation-state dilemma. Lithuania once controlled Poland and other regions of Eastern Europe, so that is an example of an unstable alignment because the Poles resented Lithuanian domination of their nation. In 1700 roughly 50% of the inhabitants in Poland were Poles; in the early 20th century, it was about 60%. There were huge numbers of Germans, Russians, Jews, Czecks, etc. This made the state unstable; it made it easy for foreign countries to invade and chop Poland up since the minorities wanted to be part of those invading states, where their nation was in the majority. That's why historians called Poland "God's Playground," because the great powers kept chopping the place up.

It is also why the Poles were so horrific to the Jews during and after WWII. In the early 20th century, the second largest population of Jews in the world was in Poland. A full 20% of world Jewry lived there. When the Nazis and Soviets occupied Poland, they immediately enlisted the Poles to eliminate the Jewish minorities, which were viewed as a threat to the state. Polish collusion made that country perhaps the second worst in Europe (behind Germany) at slaughtering Jews. So no, Poland was not a homogeneous nation from 1000 CE. It was a territory containing a number of nations. "Clarifying" that situation, "purifying" the nation and aligning it with the state borders, required genocide.

Hungary is another example of the difference between a nation and a state. Hungary was for centuries a part of the HRE/Austrian Empire. That empire had lots of problems, but it represented a stable accretion of different territories with hugely mixed national populations. The application of modern notions of nationalism destroyed Austria. The insistence on national self-determination by the Serbs was a major contributor to WWI, and the West's attempts to create nation-states out of the empire's ruins at Versailles were a disaster. Why? Because saying that you are going to give nations their own states is stupid when your new creations (Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, etc.) are themselves congeries of nations and hence illegitimate.

That contributed to WWII. When Hitler started chopping up Czechoslovakia, he did so to "protect" the members of the German nation who comprised the western edge of Cz. Uniting the German nation was also how he destroyed the Austrian state through Anschluss. But this continued long past 1945. The determination to make nations match states was what tore Yugoslavia apart in the 1990s, as it would nearly simultaneously engulf Rwanda in blood.

The notion that the Arab "nation" belongs in a single state has also created all kinds of problems in the Moslem world since the Moslem Brotherhood, Al Qaeda, ISIS, etc., all wanted to create a single theocracy that embraced all Sunnis and hence required the overthrow of the various local states. Faced with those threats, the governments have been encouraged to be more authoritarian, more extremist, more aggressive. We've seen what happens when you remove Saddam Hussein, opening up the wars between national groups like the Shi'a, the Sunnis, the Kurds, etc., all peoples with strong affinities for other countries.

What you guys are missing is that countries, nations, and states are all different things. A country is a territory, like Poland or Russia. A nation is a people who think they belong together, like Indian Moslems, or Slavs in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, or Serbians in Yugoslavia. A state is a government with control over a territory. When you say that states and nations should coincide, you open Pandora's Box.

There are some cases where history has created nations in distinct territories over which a stable state can rule. Those work well, like France or Iran or Japan. But most of the world consists of states that include many mixed nations and unclear territorial boundaries. In those situations, saying that national and state boundaries should align is generally a destructive doctrine.

You called it "quite a stretch" when I said languages can borrow words from other languages, including words like God and Allah, and now you are explaining language laws in Malaysia on 19th century politics in Europe. That's not a stretch, that's 2,000 lightyears. Forget about the whole "nation" thing.

This is the arrogance of a majority religion, plain and simple. Islam in Malaysia, buddhism in Thailand, catholicism in 1950s Spain, it's all the same.

Lest you forget, you wrote:

"Portugal and Spain have had the same border, with only minor changes, since the 12th century. By that time, many countries had been established whose names and approximate geography we instantly recognize today: France, Poland, Lithuania and Hungary all date from before the year 1000, and of course Greece and Italy from before the christian calendar."

I replied to what you wrote. It is a separate topic from the initial one, but I followed you to it. It is curious that you would now take issue with me for addressing what you wrote.

And, frankly, the topic is apposite. You really don't know that? You don't know how modern nationalism inspired the "Malay Insurgency" against Britain and the Indonesian revolution against the Dutch? About how the nationalistic rallying cry created intense stresses between the local Malays/Indonesians and the local Chinese, culminating in the atrocities of 1965-6? How Lee Kuan Yew's great triumph was preventing Malaysian nationalism from destroying Singapore?

Malaysian religious politics derive directly from the Malaysian nationalism that were inspired, like Ho Chi Minh's Vietnamese nationalism, by western notions of national self-determination. Are you seriously going to ignore that and act as if the ban on non-Moslem use of the word Allah sprang fully formed from the brow of Zeus?

You were right to broaden the topic and I was right to follow you in doing so.

Lot's Wife Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------


> What you guys are missing is that countries,
> nations, and states are all different things. A
> country is a territory, like Poland or Russia. A
> nation is a people who think they belong together,
> like Indian Moslems, or Slavs in the
> Austro-Hungarian Empire, or Serbians in
> Yugoslavia. A state is a government with control
> over a territory. When you say that states and
> nations should coincide, you open Pandora's Box.
>
sorry, but I am not missing your point, I said your point was incorrect regarding western europe. My country has been a nation state since the 9th century.

Ireland is not a better example as that has been a nation state since the gaelic invasion, albeit split into two sub-national, racially split (cousin princes separating their tribes) alliance with the same religion, culture and language. Their real troubles came with plantation: a new culture was being planted within the nation state.

I feel the problem here is people in 'younger' nations like the united states tend to think that all europeans are similar in their sense of identity as they are. It is true that there have been different groups of peoples in eastern and central europe who existed within other nations, but here in western europe it has been a different story for a long, long time.

We were a nation against the roman invasion, (both times) and a nation against assimilation within another nation, with a different religion, in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries.

I do take your point concerning the rest of europe and the changing boundaries there with different ethnic groups not having their own 'homeland', so to speak, ie a land named for themselves. But some countries, and the people within it, have been around a long, long time, complete with a national identity and language.

Even today, our crown is united with england's crown as an equal partnership and this lasted initially for over a century: we kept our own laws, parliament, religion and customs. Even after we were forced to unite our parliament with that of england, we still kept our own written law system and we have our own unique customs as each other people/ethnic grouping within the UK does.

I sometimes think we (scotland) are a bit like asterix's village in that we are that little bit of europe that is different and holds on to as much of our history and traditions as we can, but I'm sure other 'nations' feel the same pride in their country/traditions.

Your understanding of this topic is superficial.

There are different sorts of nation-state arrangements. You keep saying that Western Europe has long had stable nation states. That is false. France has, but what of Italy? That was a nation under the control of different states (foreign and domestic) until 1859. What of Germany? That was a nation with dozens of states until the 1860s and 1870s. What of the Lowlands? The Netherlands and Belgium were part of a single state until quite recently, then they were not. And Germany became problematic yet again from 1945 until the early 1990s, during which period it was a single nation but two states. So your assertion that Western Europe has had stable nation states for a long time is spectacularly false.

You say Scotland has been a nation-state since the 9th century. I hate to tell you this, but Scotland is not a state. It is a nation, but your "state" is not Scotland but the United Kingdom--as your moniker acknowledges. The Union Acts of 1707 and 1800 describe Scotland as "part" of Great Britain, not as a sovereign state or even a distinct government. In the Interpretation Act of 1978, Scotland doesn't even merit a definition. In the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act of 2011, Scotland is called a "part" of the UK and a "constituency" of the UK for purposes of political organization. Scotland has not been treated as a "state" by England, Great Britain, or the UK for many centuries. Scotland has a bit more autonomy than an American state, subject both to the foreign, defense, and other powers as England and Wales, and Northern Ireland--all subordinate to the state of the UK.

The UK is an alternative state arrangement like the US or Switzerland. In the former the country manages to redefine nation in a way that supercedes traditional nationhood and "melts several into one." In the latter, several nations agree to be a state together even though they are different nations. The UK is a blend of those two models. Do these models work? Sometimes. Are they always stable? No. Lebanon used to be upheld as the best example of a viable multinational state until, of course, it no longer was viable.

But the bottom line is you need to learn your terms. Scots do not live in a Scottish nation-state. You may live in the territory called Scotland, you may belong to the Scottish culture and nation, but you live in the state of the United Kingdom.

Unless, that is, your representatives choose to do a local Brexit and withdraw from the UK, setting up your own state that coincides with your nation. Then you could have the pride of nation-statehood but the burden of a vastly poorer economy. Scotland shouldn't to it, of course, since for many states it is wiser to surrender their sovereignty to

Correct of that last truncated sentence:

I meant to write, "Scotland shouldn't leave the UK, of course, since for many nations it is wiser to surrender their claims to sovereignty to a larger, economically stronger, and more defensible state--in this case the United Kingdom."

I talked about some countries in western europe, not all countries in western europe. I said nothing of italy, I only talked of my own country of which I have understanding. Another poster mentioned France.

Rather than myself not understanding what a nation state is, you appear to misunderstand british politics, which is not unusual. Like the northern irish and welsh, our scots identity is loyal is to our own state (scotland) before our british union, which shares many common values. However, scotland has it's own parliament (disolved two hundred years or so ago, but now re-established), law system and religion (presbytarianism). Further, the british monarch is only head of the church of england (anglicanism) and the last king who meddled with the scots' religion was dethroned and expelled.

We are not a 'union' of people who have given up their nation state nor their identity to replace it with the identity of a larger state. We are not like the swiss who, as you pointed out, are a grouping of different tribes associated into a single nation state within the European Union: we are a state, within a union already, which union is leaving another union which is trying to become a 'super-state'. This super-state is trying to re-shape our national identity, by informing us that we should now adopt an identity of 'european state' citizen. We will never do this, as we have not done so already with our first union.

Unlike the swiss, we do not call ourselves by our initial union name - we define ourselves by tribal nations, ie scots, then as british, lastly a european (in sense of region, not politics) but not necessarily pro-EU. (Don't believe the marxist SNP hype - they are on their way out and will never regain their 'peak' popularity from a few years ago).

Our king inherited the english realm; the english parliament did not like the house of stewart as it was a scots royal house, so obviously they considered the king and his progeny to be 'foreign'. Perhaps if our crown did own our land then england would have been absorbed into the scots' realm, but this was not the case. We scots have retained our uniqueness, nationhood, independent banks and judiciary within our island union. (The english do not accept scottish bank notes, much to our chagrin, and we scots take insult at being treated as 'foreigners' in england and being forced to change our currency into english notes, like going abroad).

Today, we are the nation of scots (crown does not own land in scotland) and the english nation, united by a crown which is easiest to call kingdom; but our definition of kingdom is different both to the english and to the rest of the world, as all other crowns own the land. England, wales and northern ireland all share the same laws, but retain national identity: the land of scotland belongs to the people and always has, ever since we became the nation of alba: the united scots and pictish tribes. We subsequently grew to include the surrounding islands which were populated by people once more loyal to the norse kings, but now considering themselves 'scots'.

We are a unique people who, a bit like mormons, can be a pain in the arse of those who know us and think we are bigoted, superior and cantankerous (and supposedly english-hating). Because we are different we do tend to think of ourselves as 'superior' to the other nations within our union (although we consider those people our 'celtic cousins'), and to the rest of the world by and large.

You just described yourself as having "talked about some countries in western europe, not all countries in western europe." You added, "I only talked of my own country of which I have understanding. Another poster mentioned France."

That is false on several scores. First, in your immediately preceding post you wrote specifically "regarding western europe." Now you contend that you were not talking about "all countries in western europe." But you were. Then you implied that I should look back and learn from some other "poster [who] mentioned France." I have no need to do that, however, since that poster was I. So let's put aside Western Europe, which you are now disavowing, and stick with Scotland, the case where you do have apposite knowledge.

Again, there is a difference between a nation and a state. The vast majority of traits that you describe as signalling that Scotland is a state are in fact traits of a nation and have noting to do with a state. What defines a modern state? The definition since the Treaty of Westphalia has been a single ruler, a single center of overall power, sovereignty and recognition as a sovereign state by other governments.

Scotland has since 1707 been subject to the British Crown, which has sovereignty over it. Scotland is subject to the UK parliament and the laws that parliament passes. Scotland is protected by the UK armed forces and has no substantial international force of its own. The head of state for Scotland is the Queen of England; Scotland's most senior political leader is the First Minister to, you guessed it, the Queen of England.

And what of international recognition as a sovereign state? How many foreign governments recognize Scotland as a state? Well, that would be zero.

So while Scotland is a nation, it is definitely not a state. It has not been a state for centuries--and by some definitions for many centuries. That is why the United Kingdom is a single state but a union of several nations.

Scotland is a nation without the inverted commas thanks. It was annexed in 1707 after its parliament was merged into the English one through blatant bribery and threat.

Unfortunately the LDS seem unable to fully recognise Scotland's national status and keep on going on about "Britain".

Allah may just mean "god," but the concept of god in Islam, i.e. Allah, encompasses various properties and attributes, just as it does in any other religion. Encompassed within these properties are offensive religious dogmas that are taught as coming from Allah. In short, it is not the definition of god that is objectionable, it is the dogma associated with it. And in the case of Islam, the dogma associated with Allah is extremely offensive from a social, humanist perspective.

The "turf battle," if there is such a thing, or the "evil other," if there is such a thing, reflects the dogma associated with Islam, not the identification of Allah with "god."

My problem is how Islamists try to hide the "evils" of Islamic dogma, by creating a false "poor me" scenario that shifts legitimate criticism of dogma to a persecution complex. Then, this persecution complex is used as a defense mechanism against such criticism, attempting to refocus the discussion away from such things as jihad, and the subjugation and exploitation of women; just two examples of offensive Islamic doctrine propagated in the name of Allah.

+1 ^^^ this ^^^

Thank you Thomas Reid for saying the obvious. Christians dont believe in Allah and Muslims dont believe Jesus is God. That should be obvious to anyone who looks into these religions. The Quran constantly criticizes the people of the book (the Bible) for following a false God and believing false doctrine.

It is amazing how uninformed people can say that Christians and Muslims have the same God when any Christian or Muslim would strongly disagree.

Actually Muslims do claim to be the real "Christians" with different theology. Muslims claim they are the true followers of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. OP obviously doesnt have a clue about what he is posting. The problem is that the Quran completely reinterprets the Bible and overrules it with their "new revelation" much the same as the Book of Mormon supposedly overrules the Bible in Mormonism.

And as the New Testament overruled the Old.

Thomas Reid Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> ...Islamists try to hide the
> "evils" of Islamic dogma, by creating a false
> "poor me" scenario that shifts legitimate
> criticism of dogma to a persecution complex.
> Then, this persecution complex is used as a
> defense mechanism against such criticism,
> attempting to refocus the discussion away from
> such things as jihad, and the subjugation and
> exploitation of women; just two examples of
> offensive Islamic doctrine propagated in the name
> of Allah.

Gee, where have we heard that before -- playing the persecution card to avoid talking about the harm of religious beliefs?

Could it be...mormons?

I still can't get past Joseph Smith saying Jesus Christ. I always thought it was Jesus H. Christ. As far as Allah goes, didn't we all say this as kids? Allah Allah oxen free

Are they concerned? I don't know every Christian but among those I do know I cannot recall it ever being a topic of discussion. Islam in general but never this particular issue.

I have never heard any complaints either.

Some of my business clients are Muslim (I presume). I resent when they open a business conversation with "Allah is Great." But neither do I want Christians greeting me with "Praise the Lord." Their attempts to interject religion into a purely business conversation is not professional. They are not winning my business with their references to religion.

Christians, Jews and Muslims have different theology but claim the same history and that their god is THE god.

Santa, Santa Claus, Kris Kringle, St. Nick, Father Christmas, and Grandfather Frost are all the same concept even if the believers have different traditions.

It's like saying Kris Kringle isn't Santa because they just used a different name for the same thing.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/05/2018 04:43PM by anybody.

... Is that the God who they (and we) argue about, is a fictional figure. They are arguing whether one man's imaginary friend is the same as someone else's imaginary friend, or whether they, perhaps, have different imaginary friends altogether, for whom they just happened to choose the same name.

Looks like pure Monty Python to me.

A lot of Mormons are uncomfortable about people saying God bless you when someone sneezes.

Yes!

I remember going away to college and getting strange stares when, in discussions of religion, I said "Heavenly Father" and other circumlocutions. I quickly learned that to be taken seriously, one had to skip the Mormon vocabulary and just say "God."

That is such an insignificant thing to me. Why would I care

what anyone calls their Ghawd.

El was once a phallic symbol.

Now there's a god I could worship.

At least until I can get the real thing.

I call my god peckerdick.

Is he the same as Allah?