Communion only to Christians

[S.A.M.]

I was not exactly aware of that. what is the story behind that if you have a decent link.

If true, that's pretty dumb. Were they "Piss Christ" liberal yuppies fronting the money???

The money was donated by art institutions who were interested in repairing the statues. At the same time, Afghanistan was under sanctions because of the Taliban taking over and food and medicines were blocked. When IMR rates reached world record standards, some of them because of the Taliban ban on producing opium which put hundreds of farmers out of business, the situation became a big crisis.

It took place over a lengthy period. Let me search for a decent link:

from wiki

Then Taliban ambassador-at-large, Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi, said that the destruction of the statues was carried out by the Head Council of Scholars after a single Swedish monuments expert proposed to restore the statues' heads. Hashimi is reported as saying: "When the Afghani head council asked them to provide the money to feed the children instead of fixing the statues, they refused and said, 'No, the money is just for the statues, not for the children'. Herein, they made the decision to destroy the statues." However, he did not comment on the fact that a foreign museum offered to "buy the Buddhist statues, the money from which could have been used to feed children."[13] They were upset with the lack of international humanitarian aid coming to a country ravaged by drought, earthquakes and war.

http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Buddhas_of_Bamyan

 

[Giambattista]

Well, seems they should have gone with the offer to buy the statues, eh? Rage got the better of them.
Well, thank you for enlightening me.

 

[S.A.M.]

Well, seems they should have gone with the offer to buy the statues, eh? Rage got the better of them.
Well, thank you for enlightening me.

20 years of disappointments have a way of making themselves felt.

 

[Captain Kremmen]

I hope you know that I do not consider this to be right either.

I know many Muslims do not agree with the Saud decision to make Mecca exclusively available only to Muslims.



You can't "desecrate" anything in Mecca, nothing there is holy. But if we want to talk desecration, then the Sauds top the list for what they have done to historical sites there.

This is a good subject for another thread.
Places of pilgrimage should not be barred to people of other religions.
For example, many non-Catholics visit the shrine at Lourdes.
Perhaps I should post it instead of you though

 

[Tiassa]

Post Hosties, and other notes

How does that matter? Isn't religious ritual about community?

Depends on the sect. Remember, though, that when we're talking about wafers, well, when I was in school, we kept the sacrament in a small closet referred to as the tabernacle. There were hundreds of them in a plastic bag inside a box marked "Post Hosties". I understand this aspect of the economics of scale, but I find it rather difficult to attach mystical, sacramental sentiment to a mass-produced, stamped wafer. Even in school, our theology teachers discussed the paucity of the wafer. Something tremendously spiritual is lost, compared to literally tearing apart a loaf of bread (and, thus, as some would have it, killing Christ all over again).

But, to the other, I know some Christians who consider their communion an actual meal, set aside from others, to be shared with others. Among some, I might be excluded. Among others, though, I would be welcome. In the case of the latter, the essential belief is that even if I don't believe, how can I if Christians deny me the opportunity to receive Christ in this most intimate and sacred of ways?

 

[Doreen]

If true, that's pretty dumb. Were they "Piss Christ" liberal yuppies fronting the money???

Never understood why eating one bodily fluid was acceptable ritual and looking at another was not. And Piss Christ is a beautiful photo, whereas communion wafers are most tastless, bland bread imaginable.

 

[Doreen]

Originally Posted by S.A.M.

How does that matter? Isn't religious ritual about community?

Only some of it. Much of it is about personal connection to the divine. The sitting in church listening to the priest, the singing of religious songs in church, the milling around before and after, that's all social.

Communion itself is meant to be a direct personal link from deity to individual human.

A blessed pice of bakery in a hindu ritual can confer grace and some nutrition on a non-believer.

A communion wafer and spritz of wine can do nothing for a non-believer according to the religion. I suppose if someone had been in the desert for months without food it might be a gentle reintroduction to calorie intake. Though in that case water would be better than wine and thus an anti-christ should be present to reverse the magical process.

 

[Bells]

They were constantly and consistently requesting humanitarian aid. The situation in the interior was very dire and children were dropping like flies. The UN did not send aid because the government was not recognised by the west and was under severe sanctions. They kept setting conditions for aid, as they did in Iraq. The final straw I think came when the Japanese government said they would provide aid if the Afghans allowed them to move the statues to Japan. At the time tens of people were dying per day, most of them children under the age of five. So they just blew them up. I don't agree with the way they were thinking, but I can understand the frustration.

It was the Taliban who kept setting the conditions for aid.

To re-quote:

Despite the receipt of UN and NGO aid, the Taliban's attitude toward the UN and NGOs was often one of suspicion, not gratitude or even tolerance. The UN operates on the basis of international law, not Islamic Sharia, and the UN did not recognize the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan. Additionally, most of the foreign donors and aid workers, who had tried to persuade the Taliban to change its strict policies and allow women more freedom, were non-Muslims.

As the Taliban's Attorney General Maulvi Jalil-ullah Maulvizada put it:

Let us state what sort of education the UN wants. This is a big infidel policy which gives such obscene freedom to women which would lead to adultery and herald the destruction of Islam. In any Islamic country where adultery becomes common, that country is destroyed and enters the domination of the infidels because their men become like women and women cannot defend themselves. Anyone who talks to us should do so within Islam's framework. The Holy Koran cannot adjust itself to other people's requirements, people should adjust themselves to the requirements of the Holy Koran.​

Frustrations of aid agencies were numerous. Taliban decision-makers, particularly Mullah Omar, seldom if ever talked directly to non-Muslim foreigners, so aid providers had to deal with intermediaries whose approvals and agreements were often reversed by Taliban higher-ups.[52] Around September 1997 the heads of three UN agencies in Kandahar were expelled from the country after protesting over a female lawyer for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees being forced to talk to Taliban officials from behind a curtain so her face would not be visible.[120]

When the UN increased the number of Muslim women staff to satisfy Taliban demands for Muslim staff, the Taliban then insisted "all female Muslim UN staff traveling to Afghanistan to be chaperoned by a mahram or a blood relative."[121] In July 1998, the Taliban closed down "all NGO offices" by force after those organization refused to move to a bombed-out former Polytechnic College as ordered.[122] One month later the UN offices were also shut down.​

One would think that with a country with such dire straights, that the Taliban would allow the aid to flow through without restraint. Instead they set conditions as to not only who could provide aid, but then set conditions of the gender and religion of who could provide aid. Non-Muslim aid workers were often denied access and/or faced arrest for carrying a bible on them.

With so many people dying of hunger and disease, one would imagine that the fact that female aid workers were driving or travelling unchaperoned by a "mahram or blood relative" would be of little consequence, wouldn't you say? If you care about people dying, as those aid workers obviously did for having gone there, then the religion or their travel methods should not have mattered, wouldn't you say? The Taliban kept changing the rules constantly. They demanded more Muslim women and when that was provided, they then demanded that those Muslim aid workers be chaperoned by a blood relative. Seriously, WTF? People are dying and you set those kinds of conditions and arrest and detain aid workers without justifyable cause? If they cared that their populace was dying, they would not have cared that a female lawyer from the UN was not behind a god damn curtain so that they did not look at her face!

What's more important Sam? Feeding and helping the dying and starving? Or making sure that female aid workers adhere to the strict Islamic teachings as the Taliban interpreted it?

 

[Bells]

The money was donated by art institutions who were interested in repairing the statues. At the same time, Afghanistan was under sanctions because of the Taliban taking over and food and medicines were blocked. When IMR rates reached world record standards, some of them because of the Taliban ban on producing opium which put hundreds of farmers out of business, the situation became a big crisis.

It took place over a lengthy period. Let me search for a decent link:

from wiki

From wiki:

Afghanistan's radical clerics began a campaign to crack down on "un-Islamic" segments of Afghan society. The Taliban soon banned all forms of imagery, music and sports, including television, in accordance with what they considered a strict interpretation of Islamic law.[12]

Information and Culture Minister Qadratullah Jamal told Associated Press of a decision by 400 religious clerics from across Afghanistan declaring the Buddhist statues against the tenets of Islam. "They came out with a consensus that the statues were against Islam," said Jamal.

According to UNESCO Director-General Koïchiro Matsuura, a meeting of ambassadors from the 54 member states of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) was conducted. All OIC states - including Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, three countries that officially recognised the Taliban government - joined the protest to spare the monuments.[13] A statement issued by the ministry of religious affairs of Taliban regime justified the destruction as being in accordance with Islamic law.[14] Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates later condemned the destruction as "savage".[15]

On 6 March 2001 The Times quoted Mullah Mohammed Omar as stating, "Muslims should be proud of smashing idols. It has given praise to God that we have destroyed them." During a 13 March interview for Japan's Mainichi Shimbun, Afghan Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmad Mutawakel stated that the destruction was anything but a retaliation against the international community for economic sanctions: "We are destroying the Buddha statues in accordance with Islamic law and it is purely a religious issue".

On 18 March, The New York Times reported that a Taliban envoy said the Islamic government made its decision in a rage after a foreign delegation offered money to preserve the ancient works. The report also added, however, that other reports "have said the religious leaders were debating the move for months, and ultimately decided that the statues were idolatrous and should be obliterated."[17]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhas_of_Bamyan

And now onto his claims that it was the Swedish who pushed them to destroy the statues..

However, the reasons Hashimi introduced for the decision of statues' destruction were not enough to answer many questions raised from the Islamic world.

Hashimi did not mention anything about the reactions of this decision, which some say could lead to hate crimes against the Muslim minorities in some countries, nor about the Muslim scholars around the world who condemned the Taliban actions in destroying the statues.

He also did not address the issue of foreign museums' offers to buy the Buddhist statues, the money from which could have been used to feed children, nor he address the subject of Islam's inherent respect for other religions

http://www.islamonline.net/english/news/2001-03/13/article12.shtml

And it wasn't just the statues..

However, after a few years, a decree was issued claiming all representations of humans, including those in museums, must be destroyed as per Islamic law which prohibits any form of idol worship.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/3/6/72136/43237

Funny that, eh?

There were alternatives available that would have resulted in the children being fed and the statues saved. The Taliban, in its brilliant intelligence chose to destroy the statues and not feed the children.

Now back to the topic of this thread..

Communion itself is meant to be a direct personal link from deity to individual human

Which is what Sam cannot seem to grasp.

To her it is just a wafer. To the believers it is as you have described.

 

[S.A.M.]

Yeah its just a wafer. Do you believe in baptism too? Or do Christians only turn into whackos when its your kid they are dunking in a basin?

I don't have any problem with people holding their beliefs, but I am not obligated to uphold their sentiments over it.


And I already said that the Japanese offer was the final straw.

 

[quadraphonics]

I don't have any problem with people holding their beliefs, but I am not obligated to uphold their sentiments over it.

But you are obligated to respect said beliefs, if you don't want to disrespect the people in question.

 

[S.A.M.]

But you are obligated to respect said beliefs, if you don't want to disrespect the people in question.

Not if I think their beliefs are idiotic. Anyone who thinks chewing on a wafer and pretending its Christ will save him from sins should be prepared to be treated like a nutjob. I might be inclined to be polite and not say it, but if they are going to have their sentiments hurt over it, then they are going to have a very difficult and hard life living in the real world.

 

[quadraphonics]

Not if I think their beliefs are idiotic.

I.e., you do not wish to avoid disrespecting the people in question.

Okay.

Anyone who thinks chewing on a wafer and pretending its Christ will save him from sins should be prepared to be treated like a nutjob.

The issue isn't being "treated like a nutjob," but being targetted for repression. The are being treated as subversive elements, not wackos, and not over the specifics of their beliefs, but over the challenge their very presence presents to the ethno-political aspirations of the dominant religion there.

I might be inclined to be polite and not say it,

I'd see no evidence of any such inclination, here.

but if they are going to have their sentiments hurt over it, then they are going to have a very difficult and hard life living in the real world.

They already have a very difficult and hard life living in the real world. They're targets of state repression, on behalf of the majority ethnicity and religion where they live. This is what they're hurt about, to begin with.

 

[S.A.M.]

I don't consider it repression to spit out a wafer and I have yet to see any evidence of any other insinuations being supported with facts.

 

[quadraphonics]

I don't consider it repression to spit out a wafer

Do you consider it honest to keep avoiding clear, repeated points this way?

You'd be better off not responding.

and I have yet to see any evidence of any other insinuations being supported with facts.

Your ignorance on the topic does not enhance the persuasive value of your perspective.

 

[S.A.M.]

Do you consider it honest to keep avoiding clear, repeated points this way?

You'd be better off not responding.



Your ignorance on the topic does not enhance the persuasive value of your perspective.

Repeated arguments which are baseless are still baseless. Where are the names these journalists dropped? Who has been affected? Where are the whistleblowers with electrodes attached to their genitals? Where are the converts attacked by dogs? Mauled with batons thrust into anuses as they writhe naked on the ground? Where are the bibles torn and flushed down the toilets?

When overt abuse is ignored in favour of fantasy repression based only only on a spat out wafer, excuse me for not taking it seriously.

 

[quadraphonics]

Repeated arguments which are baseless are still baseless.

You'd have to have addressed them as such, to credibly make such a claim. So far, you've been content to evade them. Which doesn't really jibe with your assertion of baselessness, but, hey, if you're going to go looking to cornered trolls for honorable perspective, you're in for a rough ride.

When overt abuse is ignored

Where is anyone here ignoring overt abuse (other than you, that is)?

Criticism is not a zero-sum game.

 

[S.A.M.]

Evade what? Lets hear what the journalists have done, shall we?

 

[quadraphonics]

Evade what?

Dealing with the points being made.

Lets hear what the journalists have done, shall we?

We've had 4 pages of that, already.

Is that the best you've got?

 

[S.A.M.]

try me again, treat me like a simpleton

1. spat out or allegedly spat out a wafer

2.?