Then you advocate lying in favor of the truth if the lying temporarily makes things better?
I'm saying that the honest man is not neccessairily the better president. It's not the intent as much as the result.
Would you support a truth that killed millions over a lie that brought world peace?
Heck, let's judge Christianity by the rape and pillage of Constantinople and Jerusalem by the Crusades. Let's judge Christianity by the Holocaust, Hitler, after all was a Catholic. let's judge Buddhism by the killing fields of Pol Pot. let's judge Hinduism by the excesses of the Indian Mutiny - in particular the Black Hole of Calcutta. let's judge atheism by the starvation of the Ukraine by Stalin.
Or, we could take these into account in looking at the broadrer picture.
You see the same thing in economic ideologies. Communism, for example, is a utopian ideal on paper; but it doesn't actually work. Therefore it's a bad system.
Let's look at the examples you'e brought up... the crusades, the holocaust, the anti-intellectual purging from Pol Pot. The commonality here is one of fundamental ideology and totalitarianism.
The point is that any religion can be fanned for a zealot flame. It is the individual leaders who look for power by fomenting hate who are the criminals, moral and legal. But they do so with the express knowledge that they are twisting the faith of others for political purposes. That is reprehensible, and the victims of that sin are the terrorists as well as the victims of the acts of terror.
Don't blame, Muhammed for the crimes of binLaden.
A true and fair point. We must look at two things, the actions of the originators (Muhammed conqured Arabia by force of arms) and the general tennor of what followed.
We cannot look solely at Bin Lauden. That would be applying a very small sample-set. We must look at a much more broad picture. The history of Islam in the world. The actions in the MIddle East, and North Africa, and Indonesia, and Central Asia, over the past 1500 years.
But of course, killing those who leave the faith (and by stoning at that!) is not exclusive to the Qur'an. Deuteronomy 13:6-9, Deuteronomy 17:3-5, 2 Chronicles 15:13, and Romans 1:20-32 all say the same- they deserve death- and if you think Fred Phelps or good old Pat wouldn't follow them if given half the chance you're kidding yourself.
So your defense is "other religions are brutal too"?
I'm curious. What modern Christian nation is executing people for converting? What modern Jewesh nation?
I think the better defense was questioning whether it actually happens. I'm not aware that Saudi Arabia has any such law.
It happens in Africa now with some sort of frequency... but that is Africa. It's sort of hard to compare Africa with a developed nation.
Africa is engaged in ethnic and religious genocide. While we can look at that in the large context (above), it does not establish it as indicitive of the religion... it's too small an area.
If, in fact, this does not happen in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, etc; it would be contra-indicated.
I believe that there is no country in the whole world which we can call thier law islamic 100% even though Saudi Arabia try to be so but none is perfect and all are just human beings and we can't forget the affect of the culture in twisting the religion for personal interest.
We are back to inefficacy and the proof being in the pudding.