Wednesday, March 15, 2006

So I ran across a great quote the other day:
"The liberals who defend Islam do not know it. Islam is the complete unity of the spiritual and the temporal, it is the reign of a dogma, it constitutes the heaviest chains which have ever shackled humanity. In the first half of the Middle Ages . . . Islam put up with philosophy , because it could not do away with it; it could not do away with it because it lacked cohesion and was little equipped to use terror . . . But when Islam found that it could depend on masses of ardent believers, then it destroyed everything. Islam was liberal when it was weak, and violent when it was strong."
-Ernest Renan

Reading this my first thought was exactly what you would expect, "Those darn right-wing nutjobs." Then I realized when it was from; the nineteenth century. What this says to me is that we have seen people saying the same things for around a hundred and fifty years. The nutjobs really are persistant.

Oh, and for fairness I'll give you another quote, speaking on how Islam persecuted free thought.
"I will not say more violently than other religious systems, but more effeciantly."

So, i'll give him one for his dislike for all religion.