{"id":3718,"date":"2019-06-17T15:01:57","date_gmt":"2019-06-17T15:01:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2019\/06\/17\/christianity-has-civilized-us\/"},"modified":"2019-06-17T15:01:57","modified_gmt":"2019-06-17T15:01:57","slug":"christianity-has-civilized-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2019\/06\/17\/christianity-has-civilized-us\/","title":{"rendered":"Christianity has civilized us . . ."},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 12pt;\">. . . but it has also weakened us.&#0160; Our virtues, which once were strengths, are now weaknesses.&#0160; Some of our virtues have come to vitiate as much as some of our vices.&#0160;<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 12pt;\">We in the West no longer crucify malefactors or break them on the wheel. We now wring our hands, absurdly, over whether lethal injection is &quot;cruel and unusual punishment.&quot;&#0160; A nation that has lost the will to execute its worst and most destructive criminals is a nation not long for this earth.&#0160; Can the will to live exist in a people who under no circumstances can muster the will to kill?<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 12pt;\">One of the fruits of civilization is toleration, that touchstone of classical liberalism.&#0160; It is a beautiful thing. It becomes a weakness, however, when it extends to the toleration of those who crucify and behead and throw homosexuals off of buildings.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 12pt;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.raymondibrahim.com\/2013\/04\/23\/crucifixion-in-islam-christians-ascend-their-golgotha\/\">Crucifixion in Islam<\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 12pt;\">It is all too common to view the practice of crucifixion as a form of torture and execution from antiquity which hasn\u2019t been used in nearly two millennia, yet this is hardly the case. In fact, crucifixion is a standard means of execution in Saudi Arabia, and there is a growing movement among Islamists to bring back crucifixion as the preferred means of punishment for a variety of crimes, including&#0160;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.jihadwatch.org\/2013\/02\/gore-silent-after-al-jazeera-airs-qaradawi-show-affirming-death-penalty-for-leaving-islam.html\">apostasy from Islam<\/a>, \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.jihadwatch.org\/2012\/12\/hatred-and-violence-in-the-quran-awareness-month-fight-them-until-there-is-no-fitnah-and-the-religio.html\">fitna<\/a>,\u201d which is a pliable term which can refer to unbelief or mischief-making, or anything which goes against Islam and Shariah. This is explicitly taught in the Qur\u2019an:<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 12pt;\">The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His messenger and strive to make mischief in the land is only this: that they should be murdered or&#0160;<strong>crucified<\/strong>&#0160;or their hands and their feet should be cut off\u2026 (Qur\u2019an 5:33).<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 12pt;\">Ominously for Christians, strongly associated with fitna is \u201cshirk,\u201d the associating of partners with Allah. Believing Jesus to be the Son of God is, for Muslims, one of the worst forms of shirk, and is therefore punishable by death, including crucifixion.&#0160;(There is a dark irony here, as Muslims do not believe Jesus was crucified, yet they prescribe crucifixion as punishment for Christians.)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 12pt;\">Read it all. Disturbing images.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>. . . but it has also weakened us.&#0160; Our virtues, which once were strengths, are now weaknesses.&#0160; Some of our virtues have come to vitiate as much as some of our vices.&#0160; We in the West no longer crucify malefactors or break them on the wheel. We now wring our hands, absurdly, over whether &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2019\/06\/17\/christianity-has-civilized-us\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Christianity has civilized us . . .&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58,180,119,136],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christian-doctrine","category-decline-of-the-west","category-islamism","category-toleration"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3718"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3718\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}