Robert Gould Shaw Quotes
In theory it may seem all right to some, but when it comes to being made the instrument of the Lord's vengeance, I myself don't like it.
Shaw, Robert Gould. Blue-Eyed Child of Fortune: The Civil War Letters of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw. Edited by Russell Duncan, University of Georgia Press, 1992, p. 344.
The Bull was directed at French King Louis VII. On Christmas Eve the year before Zengi had broken into the city of Edessa and massacred the French inhabitants. This was the Proclamation of the start of the 2nd Crusade. Note that the Pope, in order to raise troops and money for the Crusades, used the remission of previous sins to motivate Pietro dei Paganelli di Montemagno
The hatred of the English was so great in Germany during WWI that this phrase substituted for the usual “Good Morning” and “Good Bye” etc.
This sura is interpreted by some Islamic fundamentalists as absolution for the killing of a non-Muslim by a Muslim. It was Allah who did it. In a greater sense, critics of Islam observe that many Muslims and Islamic nations have a double standard of responsibility for crimes. If the victims are Muslims, the normal standards of morality hold; but if a non-believer there can be no crime. Terrorism, torture, beheading, mass murder can all be done with a clean conscience if a Muslim takes this interpretation of this sura. Many Muslims however take an opposite point of view. These people do not have the concept of fatalism and lack of free will that others believe. There is a parallel to this problem in Judeo Christian countries although it is less common statistically. But the murder of physicians who perform abortions, and the Jewish radical fundamentalist who killed innocent Arabs at worship are examples of people who viewed themselves as instruments of God in their heinous activities.
For many extremists Muslims, this sura calls for the torture or killing of the enemies of Islam. For the more moderate Muslims, the penalty of opposing Islam should be expulsion or banishment. The further modern complication of this sura is the definition of “making war with Allah.” To some extremists, it is writing or publishing anything contrary to their view of Islam; it is occupying any Islamic nation or warring with that nation even though the basis of the war might have nothing to do with religion; it is bringing a Bible into an Islamic nations; it is allowing alcohol to be sold and served; it is opposing their discriminatory customs and laws; it is pressuring them not to stone adulteresses.
On May 26, 1887 President Grover Cleveland, himself a Union Army Civil War veteran, issued an Executive Order providing that the captured Confederate regimental flags held as trophies by the War Department be returned to the States of the regiments from which they were captured. Union veterans were outraged:. Within three weeks the president rescinded the order, caving in to pressure from the major veterans organization of the day, The Grand Army of the Republic. Many years later President Theodore Roosevelt ordered the flags returned to the former Confederate states.
It turned out that it was that particular forester had approved the “use” of the national forest. FDR transferred much land from the Forest Service which was cozy with large economic corporate interests to the Park Service which then was not. Later, both would be or not depending on the leadership at the time.
Most sophisticated Muslim theologians would not agree at all with the “permission” he quotes from the Koran. However, there is no hierarchy of belief in Islam and there are tens of thousands of Muslim imams and millions of individual Muslims who believe and teach just what this particular terrorist stated.
Robert Gould Shaw was an American officer in the Union Army during the American Civil War. Born into a prominent Boston abolitionist family, he accepted command of the first all-black regiment (the 54th Massachusetts) in the Northeast. Supporting the promised equal treatment for his troops, he encouraged the men to refuse their pay until it was equal to that of white troops' wage.