What Americans thought of Jewish refugees on the eve of World War II

[Bengalzona]

(11-20-2015, 11:33 PM)Millhouse Wrote: I find it amusing that people like to compare Islam to Christianity even without radicalism involved. And what I find even more amusing is how many liberal democrats over here are trying to defend Islam when how many countries out there institute Sharia Law into the legislation? And worse how many Muslims would want to see it in place if it isnt already? Everything about Sharia Law is abhorrent to our modern civil liberties and our Bill of Rights which is the foundation of our Western societies.

The most obvious thing that a blind person can see is how the "Christian West" has evolved over the last 300+ years compared to the Islamic middle east. Christians read the same Bible as Muslims have likewise read their book over the centuries. Yet, for whatever reason, the west went from farmers and merchants 300 years ago to landing on the freaking moon, and providing the world with things like electricity, radio, cars, healthcare advancements, democracy, etc. The Middle East has done what? What have they offered the world outside of ancient fossil fuels that they just happened to luck into? 

And how is it in the year 2015 that thousands and thousands Muslims that have read the Quran are flocking to IS and other groups in the name of Islam and "He who shall not be named", yet radical Christians  are breaking the law by trying to have 3 wives or denying a gay marriage license as you said or things like that. KKK isnt riding around anymore with the law on their side, and other historical groups liek them (besides the KKK are teddy bears compared to ISIS). Radical Christians arent slamming 747s into buildings. Radical Christians in groups arent massacring people like in Paris, Mali, Syria, and other places in quite some time now. Both sides have read their same respective books over the centuries, yet look at the world from a looking glass where the Christian roots are verses where Islam roots are. 

How have they evolved differently?

It is because around the time of the Renaissance, Western society became more secularized and Christianity (as it has sometimes been wont to do in the past) reconciled itself to accept many or most of the changes in the society rather than oppose them. Christianity started out opposing the secularism. But it had what it considered a greater concern develop: its own internal conflicts which would eventually turn into their own great sectarian conflict, the Thirty Years War.

Things did not develop the same way in the Middle East. There are several reasons you could attribute this to: wide open geographic spaces between populations which enabled Islam to keep tighter control, incursions from external powers (namely, the Mongols), the rural backwater nature of the areas which Islam controlled, etc. The Middle East never went through a renaissance of their own. Their apex ended with the Ottoman defeat at the gates of Vienna in 1683. And, like the Byzantines the Ottomans had defeated previously, the last great empire went into 235 years of decline. The only time when the Islamic world opened itself up to secular ideas was after the fall of the Ottoman Empire after World War I and into the 1970's/80's. Unfortunately, many of the Islamic areas became proxies for the great political powers of the world (namely, the U.S. and U.S.S.R during the Cold War). This, combined with economic stagnation and poverty among the masses and the inability of Islamic leaders to share the oil wealth, led to resentment among people living in Islamic areas. That resentment was easily redirected against secularism and the West by Islam (with the blessing of Islamic leaders, of course).