Islam does not hate christianity

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They [Muslims] inhabited the holy land. They never invaded Europe.
  —chris p

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Unless you count Spain, Yugoslavia, and parts of Austria, Romania, and Hungary. But you raise a good point about Muslim religious tolerance. In Spain Jews lived quite tolerably under the Caliphs until Ferdinand and Isabella brought Christian rule and inquisition. Talk about your conversion by the sword!Jazzn has made great points about the difference between historical reality and Western Christian religious/cultural bias. The Muslim empire didn't spread rapidly across N. Africa and the Middle East because all non-believers were put to the sword. There was a great deal more religious tolerance, Jews AND Christians, under the Caliphs then there ever was under most Christian rulers - with the possible exception being the Byzantines.Sephardic Jews lived fairly amicably alonside Muslims in Jerusalem and the ME until the fall of the Ottomans and the rise of Zionism in the 20th century.Like Jazzn said, you can't judge a religion (or any group) by the actions of extremists and fanatics whose motivations are usually political rather than religious.This message has been edited by custard, 02-23-2005 18:40 AM

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The majority of the Arabs who lived in "Palestine" had come there from a variety of Arab nations to work for the Israelis in the early part of the 20th Century and stayed on.
  —faith

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So what happened to all those Muslims who had kicked the European Christians out of Jerusalem once and for all in 1070 AD?It's true that the concept of Palestine as an independent state didn't exist until after WWII, but neither did Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria, or Lebanon. They were all regions which comprised the Ottoman empire. But, as Jazzn points out, Palestine was recognized as a region, and the people who inhabited that region were referred to as 'palestinians.'

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There was not a "Palestinian people" until 1967. And I quoted Walid Shoebat above, who says his identity as a Jordanian was suddenly transformed into Palestinian overnight in June of 1967.
  —faith

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Walid has me confused since "Jordan" or "Transjordan" as it was called was separated from "Palestine" in 1920 by the Brits after they 'liberated' the region from the Ottomans.In fact, the Balfour Declaration of 1917 clearly states:

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His Majesty's Government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.

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So what were all these 'existing non-Jewish communities' in Palestine called? Jordanians? Jazzn has already told us that these peole were called 'Palestinians' (filistini).I think what Walid might be referring to is the 1967 Arab-Israeli war when Israel seized Jerusalem and the West Bank from Jordan - although why he would now be called Palestinian instead of Jordanian is still confusing to me.Regardless, Walid's testimony hardly invalidates several hundred years of accepted history.

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Go to many Islamic fundamentalist nations and try distributing Bibles or preaching Jesus and his father God, Jehovah or begin building a Christian church. LOL!
  —buzzsaw

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Most of your "Islamic fundamentalist nations" have had churches and christians for hundreds of years - Egypt, Turkey, Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria to name a few.As for 20th century missionaries, take a look at just about any protestant or Mormon website and you'll find info about their missions from Albania to Kazakhstan. Some of these countries might not allow street corner preaching like in the states, but they have missions and missionaries aplenty.

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Many Islamic nations do not allow missionaries to proselyte for converts in their nations. I believe Syria, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Andya's Indonesia,

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How do you explain significant INDIGENOUS Christian populations in Syria, Iran, and Iraq (I don't know about SA). And not just Christians, there are Ba'hai, Jews, and other religions as well.

and I offer UN Resolution 181 (Nov 29, 1947) as evidence that the world, at least the UN, recognized a Palestinian state and a Palestinian people twenty years before 1967.Resolution 181 calls for the creation of both a Jewish state (Israel) and an Arab state (Palestine) to be created in the region of Palestine.The UN refers to the Arab residents of the Arab state of Palestine as "Palestinians."

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The election regulations in each State shall be drawn up by the Provisional Council of Government and approved by the Commission. Qualified voters for each State for this election shall be persons over eighteen years of age who are (a) Palestinian citizens residing in that State; and (b) Arabs and Jews residing in the State, although not Palestinian citizens, who, before voting, have signed a notice of intention to become citizens of such State.

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So as far as the UN is concerned, the state of Palestine has existed just as long as the state of Israel - 1947. That gives the modern Palestinians just as much of an identity as modern Israelis.

Yep, I mentioned the Balfour Declaration in a previous post.Faith kept saying that the Palestinians weren't recognized as a 'people' until 1967, and I thought that Resolution 181 was the more compelling document as it actually used the phrase "Palestinian citizen."I agree with Jazzn though, a people do not NEED a recognized state to be considered a group of people. There are dozens of ethnic groups scattered throughout the world who consider themselves a people yet they have no state: Akkadians, Kurds, and Hmong spring to mind. Until recently Croats were an ethnic group that had no state.The people living in Palestine (which probably includes some Christians) have as much a claim to the title "Palestinian" as the people living in other newly created states have a claim to the titles "Saudi," "Jordanian," "Kuwaiti,""Iraqi," and "Lebanese."This message has been edited by custard, 02-24-2005 01:23 AM

Gee, just like Christianity. No, Faith, that statement is completely bogus and without merit. You do NOT speak for most scholars. You have to provide some hard evidence to back up that statement.

So what? They were still recognized as a group of people. The reason the Palestinians essentially boycotted the resolution was because they did not want part of their country to be lopped off and handed over to the Zionists for a Jewish state.If anything, their boycott in 1947 demonstrated that they believed they had legitimate rights to the ENTIRE region of Palestine, not because they didn't see themselves as a distinct group.Read this please lhttp://www.un.org/Depts/dpa/ngo/history.html] on the UN website.Your argument flies in the face of what the United Nations has recognized since 1948: Palestinian Arabs are a disctinct group of people who are entitled to self-determination as a nation-state.

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1- After looking at various alternatives, the UN proposed the partitioning of Palestine into two independent States, one Palestinian Arab and the other Jewish, with Jerusalem internationalized (Resolution 181 (II) of 1947).

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2- In the 1967 war, Israel occupied the remaining territory of Palestine, until then under Jordanian and Egyptian control (the West Bank and Gaza Strip). This included the remaining part of Jerusalem, which was subsequently annexed by Israel. The war brought about a second exodus of Palestinians, estimated at half a million. Security Council resolution 242 (1967) of 22 November 1967 called on Israel to withdraw from territories it had occupied in the 1967 conflict.

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3-In 1974, the General Assembly reaffirmed the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people to self-determination, national independence and sovereignty, and to return.

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Furthermore, how you think you can legitimately argue that there was no such thing as a 'Palestinian' before 1967 with someone who IS a Palestinian, Jazzn, is frightfully shocking to me.My personal experience is that the rest of the Arab world has no difficulty viewing and identifying Palestinians as a distinct group within the Arab world. I spent a lot of time in the Persian Gulf region, and it is pretty easy to distinguish Palestinians from Kuwaitis, Saudis, and other Khaliji arabs because Palestinians often dress differently and speak differently.If the UN, other Arab countries, and the Palestinians themselves see themselves as a distinct group how can you possibly argue they are not?

Yeah I saw that a lot as well. There is Arab solidarity with Palestinians when it comes to Israel, but from what I saw Palestinians were definitely viewed as foreigners, mostly for the purposes of cheap, menial labor, and ranked barely above Filipinos and other non-Arab migrant workers on the social scale.That is another reason I find it amazing that anyone could claim there is 'no such thing as a Palestinian." Other Arab populations are quite aware of the distinction.This message has been edited by custard, 02-24-2005 20:17 AM

Here is some illuminating information about the population of Palestine before 1967 from http://www.mideastweb.org/palpop.htm.

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Estimated Population of Palestine 1870-1946*
--------Arabs---(%)-----Jews---(%)-------Total
1870----367,224-(98%)---7,000--(2%)------375,000
1893----469,000-(98%)---10,000-(2%)------497,000

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[more years available on site - too hard to format this]

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And here are the census results, from the British Mandate, for 1922 and 1931:

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Year---Total------Moslems---Jews-----Christians---Others
1922---752,048----589,177---83,790---71,464-------7,617 1.01
1931--1,033,314---759,700---174,606--88,907-------10,101

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Faith, the British Mandate reported that between 500,000 to 750,000 Palestinian Arabs lived in Palestine before WWII. This is a lot more than a few scattered nomads.This message has been edited by custard to try to format the darn columns so they are legible, 02-25-2005 01:29 AMThis message has been edited by custard, 02-25-2005 01:34 AM

Faith,Look, you are correct when you state that a Palestinian national identity is a fairly recent phenomenon historically speaking, but your dates are way off.1967 is a bogus date because there is evidence that there were stirrings of Palestinian nationalism as early as the nineteenth centuryAgain from http://www.mideastweb.org/palrevolt.htm

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From 1831 to about 1841, Syria and Palestine were wrested from Turkey by the Egyptian ruler, a former vassal of the Ottomans, Muhammed 'Ali and his son Ibrahim Pasha, the commander-in-chief of the Egyptian army. They followed a repressive policy of conscription and taxation, leading to a revolt of Palestinian Arabs.

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On May 19, 1834 a group of important families and sheiks from Nablus, Jerusalem and Hebron, led by Qasim al-Ahmad, chief of Jamma'in subdistrict of Jabal Nablus, informed the Egyptian military governor that they could no longer supply their quotas of conscripts for military service, because the peasants had fled from the villages into the mountainous area which were difficult to reach.

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I think the date might be more accurately pegged during the time of the British Mandate, but I think these types of incidents might be comparable to early colonial attitudes in the US where the colonies began to see themselves as 'Americans' even before they declared independence from Britain.Here's a more concrete example of Palestinians exerting self-determination:

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Prior to the arrival of the British and the beginning of the British Mandate, the Arabs of Palestine consistently demanded to be united with Syria, and usually saw themselves as part of a single united Arab country.

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Palestinian identity began to crystallize during the British mandate and the Arab revolt of 1936, and more especially upon the UN declaration of partition in 1947. Two attempts were made to form a Palestinian state after partition of Palestine.

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There's UN resolution 181 again.What other proof do you have so support your position that Palestinians did not see themselves as a distinct group, indiginous to that region until 1967? So far you've only given us the quotes of some Jordanian guy.I've shown UN documents, links to historical sites, and British Mandate docs which all support the argument that a Palestinian national identity began forming as early as the nineteenth century, but definitely became tangible during the British Mandate.This message has been edited by custard, 02-25-2005 02:07 AMThis message has been edited by custard, 02-25-2005 02:10 AM

Right, all those American made Uzis we send in our annual shipments as part of the International Jewish Conspiracy Accord.

Look like an M-16 to you? About those f-16s (Amnesty International)

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In July 2002 the UK government announced that it would allow the export of UK-made components for US-made F16 aircraft destined for Israel.

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and

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In November 2002 there were reports that a German company was supplying transmission systems for the new Israeli Merkava tanks, despite a German embargo on arms sales to Israel.

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And Hamas is still using those Chinese knockoffs of AK-47s. So I guess the US, China, UK, and Germany are responsible for the problems between Israel and Palestine.Who keeps trying to broker peace deals between the two groups? Oh that's right, the US. Not a surprise when we've done as much or more for half of Europe, Russia, the Balkans, the ME, and Asia.And those EU made tractors the Israelis use to bulldoze the olive orchards? The EU ought to be ashamed.But you raise a really solid, cogent point: if the US just stopped selling weapons to Israel, no other country in the world (certainly not the French, Russians, or Chinese) would ever sell them arms, and then all the problems there would simply evaporate.Way to add to the discussion contracycle.

Wrong again. How about a quote from the Venidad from Zorastrianism: Doesn't get much clearer than that.Fitting since Zorastrianism, the most popular religion in the Middle East during the time of Jesus, heavily influenced what Christianity became.