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Redemptionsong

Well-Known Member
You read my posts so don't make assumptions to massage your ego, are you denying that pol pot was raised Buddhist with a catholic education?
Yes, he was raised a Buddhist, and he did attend a Catholic school. What difference did that make when he became a Marxist-Leninist?
 

Redemptionsong

Well-Known Member
Everyone is a product of their education.
That has nothing to do with the claim that all terrorism is inspired by religion. Clearly it is not.

The teaching of the New Testament is that 'works of the flesh' are a universal human failing [Galatians 5:19]. The real question is whether or not a person recognises their sinfulness and seeks to follow after Christ 'in Spirit and truth'. IMO. This has very little to do with religion, or self-righteousness. It has everything to do with the righteousness of God.
 

Kooky

Freedom from Sanity
Thoughts?

In my opinion.
What I see is a religious figure distancing themselves and their religious community from acts of terrorism and declaring them anathema to their own understanding of morality and ethics. Interestingly, this is precisely what Muslims have been hounded about ever since 9/11 - that they ought to distance themselves from Islamist terrorism and Islamist ideology, condemn terrorist attacks, and generally ostracize terrorists from their midst.

So what exactly is it that the President of FIANZ should have done instead? Should they have embraced the attacker as one of their own, and affirmed that they were acting in accordance to the same morality as the many Muslims in their community who did not turn towards terrorism?

Well he is not here to speak for himself, but if he meant that such people don't represent all Islam he could have said as much without slurring the non-religious.

In my opinion.
Where did you detect slurs in his speech?
 

Kooky

Freedom from Sanity
Pol Pot was raised Buddhist and christian. He was Buddhist and never renounced his faith.
He was also trained to become a teacher, much like Mao Zedong.
Apparently pedagogy produces a dangerous class of individuals, almost as many as law and philosophy.

Or perhaps receiving a middle class education as a colonial subject under an oppressive and authoritarian regime teaches people certain things that they would not have learned if they had been immersed in an open and democratic society that did not treat them as subhumans due to their origin, race, and cultural background.
 

ChristineM

"Be strong", I whispered to my coffee.
Premium Member
He was also trained to become a teacher, much like Mao Zedong.
Apparently pedagogy produces a dangerous class of individuals, almost as many as law and philosophy.

Or perhaps receiving a middle class education as a colonial subject under an oppressive and authoritarian regime teaches people certain things that they would not have learned if they had been immersed in an open and democratic society that did not treat them as subhumans due to their origin, race, and cultural background.

It takes a hell of a lot to turn a Buddhist into a genocidal maniac
 

Kooky

Freedom from Sanity
It takes a hell of a lot to turn a Buddhist into a genocidal maniac
From what I gathered, the Khmer Rouge were a deeply dysfunctional organization from the get go that was riddled with infighting and paranoia from top to bottom, and therefore made almost as much of an effort persecuting one another as they did brutalizing the people governed by their horrible regime.

And that's before we get into their absolutely insane political ideas.

Although as far as I can tell, being persecuted by their own government and having to hang out in the mountainsides and deep jungles far away from civilized life seems to have put them under great stress, and the fact that they were essentially a collection of politicized bandit groups with only the thinnest veneer of common ground in terms of political beliefs and goals seems to have only added to that insanity.

I found this article very instructive in that context:
Of the ten members of the CPK standing committee named in 1963, 6 were executed by Pol Pot after they took power in 1975 and before they were deposed in 1979.

In 1975, when the CPK seized power (although they never publicly announced that the CPK was in fact in power until 1977—instead publicly naming a fictitious group of United Front personalities who held nearly zero internal influence in formulating State policy but represented a broad sector of well known figures, including King Sihanouk, who retained the title of Head of State while under house arrest ), they held another Party Congress and named as their standing committee members, in order of rank, Pol Pot, Nuon Chea, Sao Phim, Ieng Sary, Son Sen, Ta Mok, Vorn Vet, and Nheum. Of those 8 members, 3 were executed during the Khmer Rouge reign in power—Sao Phim, Vorn Vet, and Nhuem. They also named 22 members to the central committee of the CPK. Of these, 18 were ordered executed by the time the Khmer Rouge were ousted from power in 1979. The existence of the Party was never publicly acknowledged until 1977.

Among the first to be purged was Hu Yuon, who as finance minister, objected to the abolishing of markets and the use of currency. He was believed to have been executed in the months after the 1975 liberation of Phnom Penh.
 
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danieldemol

Well-Known Member
Premium Member
What I see is a religious figure distancing themselves and their religious community from acts of terrorism and declaring them anathema to their own understanding of morality and ethics. Interestingly, this is precisely what Muslims have been hounded about ever since 9/11 - that they ought to distance themselves from Islamist terrorism and Islamist ideology, condemn terrorist attacks, and generally ostracize terrorists from their midst.

So what exactly is it that the President of FIANZ should have done instead? Should they have embraced the attacker as one of their own, and affirmed that they were acting in accordance to the same morality as the many Muslims in their community who did not turn towards terrorism?
No, he could have identified them as belonging to a different sect acting in accordance with a different morality without dishonestly denying that the terrorist in question had a religion.

Where did you detect slurs in his speech?
It was poor word choice, I meant to slander or tarnish the image of the non-religious.

In my opinion.
 
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