Bloodless Coup

If I'm not mistaken, this is where Islam differs as a matter of course from most other world religions, the fact that tolerance is not valued as a piece of the mercy it espouses. It's certainly true (as the Robertson post above points out) that many Christians focus on intolerance (of self and other through focus on sin and evil), but it's my understanding that it isn't just the fundamentalist fringe of Islam that is so intolerant of other religions. There is no god but Allah, period, is essentially their commandment, so it fits that if they're running the Afghan government according to their culture, this would be a fitting implementation of political policy. That said, it makes it difficult for us to be their friends if every time one of their people becomes a little like our people, they kill them. Of course, the ultimate question is are we tolerant enough to tolerate the intolerant, especially when the intolerant don't tolerate us. There is a greater question of how does this affect freedom, if in their religious liberty they deprive others of that liberty, and their lives to boot. If even civilized Muslims are set upon living by the sword, they may in time die by the sword (if Allah wills it).

I'm not a student of world religions - but Morris your response seems really wrong. Islam hold there is no god but Allah. True. But how is this different from Christianity (ok, the "Allah" part, but not the no gods but the 1 god part). And Islam is the only religion that doesn't allow tolerance? WTF?!? Lots of times Christians haven't espoused tolerance. And of course the Ottoman Empire was considerably more tolerant than a lot of Christian governments.

Care to reword your point? Or drop it?

Bro,
Here's a website describing the number of sacred references to the no-god-but-Allah point within Islam. But the really important point here is, yes, there are plenty of Christians who believe in exorcising their own evil by punishing it in others, plenty who believe in what they see as God's righteous anger being served. But these people aren't going out and killing thousands of non-believers in America. Muslims have been going out and killing thousands of Jews and Christians around the world. And the American government doesn't permit this kind of thing here. But if they're going to go to war against Christians, albeit within their own borders, if the most civilized Imams of that country can't stand up and overcome this, what's next? Pat Robertson acts a fool a lot, but our government doesn't sanction killing people that Pat Robertson doesn't like. He is an extremist within Christianity. This whole issue goes to the gut of the war on terror. If their leaders, both governmental and religious, agree that killing Christians and Jews is okay simply because of a person's religious orientation, then that sends a definite message to terrorists that they should continue their war. And it teaches all the little Afghan boys and girls the message too. If they can't get over their intolerance of us and make peace in a way like the compassionate originators of most of our world's religions (as opposed to many of their followers) would, if they continue seeking to destroy us, we will come to have a lot of trouble tolerating them, unless we agree that our lives aren't worth protecting.

Well, what's the point of that? I used to hear about there is no other God in the Methodist church every Sunday.

I still don't get your point. And your level of generalization here is breath-taking.

Surely not all Muslims advocate killing Christians. Surely not all Christians don't want to kill Muslims (been reading the stories on Nigeria lately?). Some governments (including ours) have no problem with the actions of certain groups of terrorists. All that's true.

And your problem would seem to be with the government of Afghanistan (which we played a huge role in creating), not the religion. So, what, should we oust Karzai?