Self righteous characters have generally been

mynah wrote:
Ironically those who start off as purely self-serving bastards often inflict the least harm because others hate them enough to overthrow them sooner.

doremi wrote:I don't think the Bible, Torah, Guru Granth Sahib, the many hindu holy scriptures, are any different. All of them try and pass themselves as the ultimate truth. It differs on how they are interpreted.

Josh Carney wrote:

doremi wrote:I don't think the Bible, Torah, Guru Granth Sahib, the many hindu holy scriptures, are any different. All of them try and pass themselves as the ultimate truth. It differs on how they are interpreted.

Difference is that it is a very very small minority from those faiths who actually subscribe to those beliefs in stark contrast to Islam. One of the issues here is that Islam is still a new religion in comparison to say Christianity meaning that Islam may need to go through all the turmoil and blood shed that Christians went through before some balance is restored.

Josh Carney wrote:No, I am not going to give any links. I have done my research and this is how I see it. When Mohammad originally came up with Islam during his Mecca days he had no more than a handful of people ready to subscribe to his religion. He was mostly subject to ridicule. During these days he passively tried to preach Islam. It basically did not work.

Then he came up with the new carrot and stick strategy during the Medina period. He decided that preaching alone will not get people to listen to him. So he promised riches to people if they followed him. This was the carrot and thus started the sequence of robbing caravans. The booty was shared and the siezed people were forecully converted, this continued for a while and then the ante stepped up. There were invasions and the carrot at the end of it was the enslaving of the captured men and the booty of their riches and their women. Passages were included to justify this including the branding of "Kafirs" and the corporal punishments that they would incur. Also passages were included to deter people from leaving Islam once they were in. So began the control for people and their minds and the saga continues today on the back of the continuous precedence that exists right through the Islamic history as a justification. Thus what might have began as a peaceful religion was transformed into what we see today.

On your comparison to Jesus, Bible etc. yes there have been various attrocities committed in the name of other religions as well. However what the difference is that the vast majority of so even called christians do not see the Bible as the ultimate word and in the Western Christian world they have separated state from the religion. To me that is the difference.

Again nothing personal against you or Islam to me all organised religions are evil. I believe in being spritual to a set of human values and am OK with religion as long as it is personal and not imposed upon others.

mynah wrote:I'm happy to let anyone believe what they want to, as long as they return the courtesy. I have a serious problem with religions and philosophies that want to police your mind and persecute those who choose to think for themselves.

doremi wrote:Himesh Reshammiya would also be a worthy candidate.

1. Crusades (1095-1291)
   
2. Estimated totals:
   
   
   
   • Wertham: 1,000,000
     
   • Charles Mackay, Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1841): 2,000,000 Europeans killed. [http://www.bootlegbooks.com/NonFiction/Mackay/PopDelusions/chap09.html]
     
   • Aletheia, The Rationalist's Manual: 5,000,000
     
   </LI>
   

• Individual Events:
  
  
  
  • Davies: Crusaders killed up to 8,000 Jews in Rhineland
    
  • Paul Johnson A History of the Jews (1987): 1,000 Jewish women in Rhineland comm. suicide to avoid the mob, 1096.
    
  • Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, v.5, 6
    
    
    
    • 1st Crusade: 300,000 Eur. k at Battle of Nice [Nicea].
      
    • Crusaders vs. Solimon of Roum: 4,000 Christians, 3,000 Moslems
      
    • 1098, Fall of Antioch: 100,000 Moslems massacred.
      
    • 50,000 Pilgrims died of disease.
      
    • 1099, Fall of Jerusalem: 70,000 Moslems massacred.
      
    • Siege of Tiberias: 30,000 Christians k.
      
    • Siege of Tyre: 1,000 Turks
      
    • Richard the Lionhearted executes 3,000 Moslem POWs.
      
    • 1291: 100,000 Christians k after fall of Acre.
      
    • Fall of Christian Antioch: 17,000 massacred.
      
    • [TOTAL: 677,000 listed in these episodes here.]
      
    
    
  • Catholic Encyclopedia (1910) [http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/]
    
    
    
    • Jaffa: 20,000 Christians massacred, 1197
      
    
    
  • Sorokin estimates that French, English & Imperial German Crusaders lost a total of 3,600 in battle.
    
    
    
    • 1st C (1096-99): 400
      
    • 2nd C (1147-49): 750
      
    • 3rd C (1189-91): 930
      
    • 4th C (1202-04): 120
      
    • 5th C (1228-29): 600
      
    • 7th C (1248-54): 700
      
    
    
  • James Trager, The People's Chronology (1992)
    
    
    
    • 1099: Crusaders slaughter 40,000 inhabs of Jerusalem. Dis/starv reduced Crusaders from 300,000 to 60,000.
      
    • 1147: 2nd Crusades begins with 500,000. "Most" lost to starv./disease/battle.
      
    • 1190: 500 Jews massacred in York.
      
    • 1192: 3rd Crusade reduced from 100,000 to 5,000 through famine, plagues and desertions in campaign vs Antioch.
      
    • 1212: Children's Crusade loses some 50,000.
      
    • [TOTAL: Just in these incidents, it appears the Europeans lost around 650,000.]
      
    </LI>
    
  </LI>
  

• TOTAL: When I (author) take all the individual death tolls listed here, weed out the duplicates, fill in the blanks, apply Occam ("Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate"), etc. I get a very rough total of 1½ M deaths in the Crusades.
  

Rob I wrote:Hitler (murdered maybe 13,000,000 people, and kicked off the most terrible war in history).