Religious fundamentalist calls for non-believers to convert or be killed

[Indy Texas]

No, it wasn't a member of ISIS or an Iranian ayatollah. It was another fuzzy-bearded, self-proclaimed religious authority who has made his regressive views on gays, women, blacks and other groups known in the past.

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[Indy Texas]

What is this? I didn't know Phil Robertson was a clergyman.

Also, more bizzare ISIS apologism from Indy Texas.

More? Where was the first ISIS apologism? How is pointing out the similarities of our own mouth-breathing fundamentalists to theirs an apology?

I've already had right-wing Democrats call me an amoral war criminal for suggesting that Assad is the lesser of two evils in Syria compared to ISIS.

[Indy Texas]

...I'm an apologist for ISIS because I suggested factchecking breaking stories due to some of those stories later being proven to be untrue?

I'm pretty sure that saying people did X when they didn't isn't excusable just because "they would have done X if they had the chance." We're not making value judgments. We're talking about things that objectively did or did not happen. And the church burning that was referenced in that thread did not happen. Neither did the forced female circumcisions some news outlets were reporting. I realize this isn't NYT, but surely we can have higher standards than Faux News.

[Indy Texas]

Again, I fail to see how wanting to verify whether or not an event took place translates into justifying the event or serving as an apologist for the perpetrators.

If you were alive in the 1920s, you'd probably be the sort who grabbed a pitchfork and a torch the second someone said they heard a black man raped a white woman. No waiting for the other shoe to drop. Shoot first, ask questions later. That's more your style. You'd probably have assumed Saddam Hussein was complicit in 9/11 and had WMDs too.

If someone told you that ISIS had gone to Europe and killed 500 schoolchildren, would you reflexively accept that as gospel or wait for verification? The ramifications of such an act would be huge - it would entail a shift of that conflict into Europe and mark a new phase for ISIS, in the same way that the Yazidi massacre marked the first time they shifted their actions away from "redeeming" Islamic society and toward destroying non-Islamic society. So yes, when something that consequential is in the balance, I do expect verification. I don't make assumptions about things of that magnitude.

I'll leave you and Donald Rumsfeld to your unknown knowns and evidence of absence equivocating.

[Indy Texas]

I'm still waiting for him to explain where he got the idea the old racist duck guy is a cleric of some kind.  I suspect I'll be waiting a long time.

Low-church evangelicals of that ilk make no distinction between pastors and the rank-and-file. They all think of themselves as armchair clerics. He certainly comments on social/religious issues in public enough that he seems to think he's one.

[Indy Texas]

What I am saying is that when someone does something that is generally (here, morally) equivalent to what they have been known to be doing and have done before it would not change the facts of the situation. It does not change things. Again, if we found out, after this was all resolved, that ISIS slaughtered one fewer village they were thought to have, this would not change our understanding of what they did and the fact that it was bad. That fact would be of no use to anyone except to those trying to get an exactly tally of victims or targets.

I mean, if they were to blow up a dam, I would seek to have that confirmed- that has not happened before. But if there was a story about their blowing up their tenth dam- what difference would it really make? And could you stop with this hackery about "Fox News", "Donald Rumsfeld", etc?

Actually, yes, there is a difference between blowing up nine dams and blowing up ten, because every one of them has consequences and ramifications.

By your logic, if there is an unsolved murder, we should just assume a serial killer who's on the loose did it because he's already killed a bunch of people so we might as well assume he killed that one.

How dare you accuse me of being an apologist for a group of people as reprehensible as ISIS. That's a low blow, even for a sanctimonious dollar store Michael Steele like you.

[Indy Texas]

Indy, do you think all people who think it might be a good idea to kill ISIS are just as bad as they are, or is this limited to those who are religious?

I happen to think killing ISIS members is a wonderful idea. I only wish the functioning governments of the Middle East would do so without expecting us to do the job for them.

But suggesting that they should be converted to Christianity in lieu of being killed implies Pastor Phil is more offended by their Mohammedanism than by the egregious war crimes and human rights violations they've committed. It's also a rather inconvenient parroting of ISIS' own message to its victims - convert or be killed.