Religion Quotes
Surprisingly, many third world leaders very much desired to become colonies of Great Britain. This letter was not only signed by the King but all the princes as well. The letter languished for more than 3 years in the British Foreign Office without even an answer as British governments vacillated between expansionism and anti-colonialism.
Historically, this is an amazing quotation. It is typical of analyses of Islam in the 21st century when America and most of the non-Muslim world was having great difficulties with Islamic militancy. But this was written at the end of the 19th century, in 1899. Churchill had a grasp of much that it would take other politicians a century to understand. This book was relatively unknown to all but a few historians, military men, and political scholars. (There was a shortened version published in 1902 which did not include this passage and that is the version that Project Gutenberg posted on the Internet. So do not assume that the quotation is wrong if you cannot find it in the version you are reading on the Internet. You need the 1899 longer and more detailed version.
Referring to slaveholders in Kansas:. the then modern weapon, the Sharp, breech-loading rifle
At the time the Dutch Reformed Church was the official state religion of the Netherlands.
The treaty, which was also ratified by the Senate, was actually drafted by Joel Barlow, the U. S. Consul in Tripoli. It was the first official statement of the United States on its religious basis or lack thereof.
One Islamic belief that has stood since the inception of the religion is that if a true believer who is defending the faith in a jihad is killed, he will immediate be transported to Paradise where he will receive the best of the other world. If a Muslim dies under normal circumstances, he is judged and may or may not attain Paradise depending on his past life. However, if he dies in jihad, all past sins are immediately erased and he is guaranteed Paradise. This quotation is exactly what is told to Muslim fighters and suicide bombers today (see {635766}, {588728} and {590762}) and it is just as effective as ever in persuading men to fight and sacrifice themselves. The Roman Catholic Pope issued a similar edict in the Crusades and fights of both religions were willing and almost anxious to die in battle. In modern times Christian leaders do not make such appeals and if they did, few would believe them.
With the partition of India forming an independent Pakistan, ethnic riots broke out and millions of people were killed. This joint statement was issued to try and quell the violence but it had progressed too far. Jinnah as a political ploy to obtain the partition organized Muslims and threatened violence—see {627153} and {627169}. Things got out of hand with ethnic cleansing being an objective in many localities—see {627146} and {627149}.
This famous quotation has been attributed to Voltaire, 1694-1778, and French Philosopher, Denis Diderot, 1713-1784. Most quotation collections erroneously attribute it to Diderot in the version “Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.” Both Voltaire and Diderot used the quotation as did many others opposed to monarchy and the then repressive church hierarchies. But the origin of the famous phrase was with Meslier. When the priest died, three handwritten manuscripts were found written and signed by him in which he attacked religion in general and the church and the Bible in particular. His Testament was read by Voltaire and Denis Diderot among others and he was very influential in their development as opponents of organized religion.
This was Jefferson’s definition of Christianity. However, for orthodox Christians, this was insufficient as Jefferson did not believe in the Trinity or in the divinity of Jesus. Nor did he believe in the Biblical narrative of most historical events. He was a Christian in the sense that he thought the ethics and philosophy of Jesus was as good as he had seen. See {629222}. In this sense, a number of the Founding Fathers were “Deists” including Jefferson’s conservative rival, John Adams.
One of the reasons that this quotation is so significant is that the Roman Catholic Church had been historically antithetical to science and scientists. It took hundreds of years before the church would admit that Galileo was right and the church wrong about the earth revolving around the sun. But Pope John Paul II, along with his other major accomplishments removed the traditional Catholic hostility in theology and tradition. He even acknowledged the validity of the Theory of Evolution and taught that there was nothing inherent in evolution that denied God or scripture.
