United States President Barack Obama delivered his widely-anticipated speech to the Muslim world today in Cairo. Below is an excerpt from his speech:
“It is easier to start wars than to end them. It is easier to blame others than to look inward; to see what is different about someone than to find the things we share. But we should choose the right path, not just the easy path. There is also one rule that lies at the heart of every religion – that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. (Appluase.) This truth transcends nations and peoples – a belief that isn’t new; that isn’t black or white or brown; that isn’t Christian, or Muslim or Jew. It’s a belief that pulsed in the cradle of civilization, and that still beats in the hearts of billions around the world. It’s a faith in other people, and it’s what brought me here today.
We have the power to make the world we seek, but only if we have the courage to make a new beginning, keeping in mind what has been written.
The Holy Koran tells us, “O mankind! We have created you male and a female; and we have made you into nations and tribes so that you may know one another.”
The Talmud tells us: “The whole of the Torah is for the purpose of promoting peace.”
The Holy Bible tells us, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.” (Applause.)”
Here is the video of President Obama’s speech:
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I always like Obama’s speeches. They are fair, democratic and truly universal-reaching. Unlike some of the other posters here, who are having a filed day demonising Christianity in the threads on AWARE.
Obama mentions a crucial point: that all religions call for peace. Perhaps the secularists should take note of that before they try mischaracterizing Christianity again.
yes, i am all for peace, but some cannot stand GLBTs…
people who cannot stand GLBTs & labels others who are tolerate of GLBTs as pro should take time for self reflection.
Yarh, maybe the fundamentalists can think of that before they impose their own values on others also.
the only way to peace is to stop all the anti- this & anti-that group from speaking on behalf of the majority of the society.
Arix, don’t steeplejack this thread. Keep your comments on the AWARE Saga and the CSE on the related threads.
Obama sums everything off from the Bible, Koran and the universal Values we all Share!
“Thou shall not do unto others where we do not want others to do upon us”
Now the Aware’s Christians and Gays can wash their issue into the dustbin of history? Their issue is so insignificant as compare!
He is God-send. He signals to the world that the time has come for all diversities of race, religions, mankind and nature to live in peace and harmony for the survival of this world.
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he is a great guy and leader not only for usa but the world.
Hope this great man will say something about singapore, a once great partner and friend to Bush administration where so many millionaires are created during that period.
I am a fan of Obama. I hope our leaders wil learn from him. Our leaders has lost contact with the people. Three cheers to Obama.
He is an inspirational man. Humble and Charismatic. He sure beat Bush 100 times.
Singapore government is like what he mentioned about that some countries uses Democracy as a weapons to get power but when they got it they uses devices to suppress the rights of the people……
It should be “A Government of the people and by the people”
“You must put the interest of your people and the legitimate working of the political process above your party.” “Without these, election alone does not make true democracy” ************ HEAR IT PAP ??????
Singaporean have to listen to this.
Its admirable of him to be contented with his salary given the world basically relies on him for growth, primarily.
I bet you our ‘righteous’ government is turning a blind eye and a deaf ear to what Obama is saying about Democracy…
And the usual will surely be dished out: ” .. we have a different system here…”
Wonderful speech. In a world where politics is so often boiled down to catchphrases and soundbites, with politicians throwing stereotypes and generalisations around, it’s good to see someone who can speak logically and rationally about the state of the world, and put forth a strong stand while still managing to accomodate his critics and people who hold different opinions.
Bravo, Mr. Obama.
Obama forgot to mention Buddhism the only teaching that is not “god-dependant”–where man uses his full potential to achieve enlightenment, where man doesn’t have to go into “god do this for me;god give me that;i am your no 1 supporter”;god doesn’t even help the poor starving child in africa; why should he help u, you believer?
budamax1952 , don’t get to close to the Sedition Border…
Wow a dose of reality sure make some people jump up and down and start talking about this border and that border
Although Barack Obama (Age: 47) gets lower pay but is very much better than the unelected FAT puppet S R Nathan (Age: 84).
smallvice (#6),
I am NOT steeplejacking this thread. Am I not entitled to congratulate Obama too?
miceisnice (#5),
Precisely. If only we could stop the anti-Religious Group from speaking out on behalf of society too.
drivingsideways (#16),
Exactly. Obama doesn’t just have Charisma; he does possess a Real Vision, and a multicultural one at that. He is I believe the best leader for an Age so divided by sectarian lobbies who throw mud at each other and get everyone else caught up in their crossfire. And just to clarify, the sectarians include both Religious and Secular Nuts.
Joel Low (#13),
Hear hear. Eactly. Our Government should follow Obama’s lead. Perhaps he will provide some friendly pressure, come this November. Or then, perhaps, CNA will censor any speech in Asia made along that line, especially if it criticises PAP.
Hi Arix,
Nobody is anti-religion here. Secularists support that Religion has a place in Society and Religion should observe that place. The root of the problem is that a minority fraction within the religious masses who are trying to circumvent the boundary of religion in the public sphere. Please terminate your religious propaganda.
Hi Arix#23″And just to clarify, the sectarians include both Religious and Secular Nuts”;;;;;;Just to clarify, actually Buddhism is the “middle-way”;;;You cannot label it Religious or Secular, which are the 2 extremes the “middle-way” avoids.
He’s is great. I wish we can be the 53rd states of the United States Of America.
hi Arix,
as a poster early into the thread the least you can do is refrain from beating the war drum.
////all religions call for peace. Perhaps the secularists should take note of that before they try mischaracterizing Christianity again.////
what is it really that made you verbalise that? it is quite troubling to learn some actually feel so victimise. perhaps you can share how is came to be?
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
hi Smallvice585,
i agree with you. just in case some misunderstood it as a form of bashing. let me also quote the keywords.
////… a minority fraction within the religious masses…////
i hope there is a more discerning lot to help correct an unhealthy misperception.
smallvice (#24),
All right then, retract your claim that it is wrong to “undemonise Christianity” and i will rest my case. Anyway, there are people like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Dan Brown who truly want to see Religion Wiped off the face of the Earth.
buda (#25),
Christ was a Jew before he became Christian. Buddha was a Hindu Brahmin before he became Buddhist. Strictly speaking, Buddhism is a derivative of Hinduism, and in fact some Hindu groups – or perhaps Hinduism in general – treats the Buddha as one of a long line of reincarinations of Lord Krishna.
“Religious” and “Secular” are labels applied to spectra, not different ends of the same spectrum. The more accurate phrasing of your sentence would be.
“Buddhism is neither Theistic nor Atheistic. It is the ‘Middle Way’”
budamax (#17),
Buddhism does have Nirvana though.
The “your-god-my-god” disputes are a sad fact that have mired all religious groups throughout history. Actually, fundamentally, these useless conflicts stem from attempts to personify God, which are doomed to fail, since God is not a Person.
And as for your God-in-Africa argument, well it is a matter of understanding what Divine Agency is. Those people making that argument obviously lack the conceptual understanding and appreciation of Divine Agency.
hi Arix,
there will always be people who are anti-this & that. but for the most of us we cannot wipe them off the face of earth. i personally, will choose to distant myself from such people.
just as i choose what i eat according to my budget, i choose how much time such “toxic” people are worth my time. yes, there are self help books on dealing with “toxic” people, time wasters, annoying people, hurtful people, the a**holes in life, generally anyone who is considered draining, psychologically, emotionally. you can’t “beat” them, you dun want to join them, so stay away (far away) from them.
life is too short to spend time just to get everyone agree with me. isn’t it?
The PAP Ministers and MPs, especially the young ones, have to wake up and start to follow the lead of a real great man instead of following in the shadows of a soon-to-go egoistic, self-praise, self-important dictator.
Dictatorship has no place in this New Era of the Internet and new media. One by one they are falling. It is only a matter of time all dictators and their systems of dictatorial control become extinct.
One who enjoys instilling fear into others is actually a sick person who is full of fear of being exposed and toppled from his seat of power.
One who aims to control everything and everybody is a sick person who is paranoid of losing control because he has already lost control of himself.
Nobody loves dictators. Everybody hates dictators to the core. Wake up all dictators, wake up and repent and change your ways before it is too late!
mice is nice (#27),
1) I was afraid of “skeptic-jacking” (Yes, I coined the word.) I made my first post to highlight that Obama is not anti-religion, because I figured that if I did not make such a post, someone else would start coming out spouting attacks on Religion again, which is exactly what happened on all the threads on the AWARE Saga. People like Genami who expressed their observation of it were shot down as “bigots” and “intolerant”.
Why do I feel victimised? Perhaps, you should look at Smallvice’s posts in the other threads. Here I am, trying to patiently clarify Christian viewpoints and what exactly flows through moderate minds and their approach, and there is Smallvice, HT and Gang, brazenly accusing me of “Steeplejacking” conversations. I use a particular format of reply so that I cover each and every paragraph of whatever I am replying to.
2) Yes, I agree with the “minority fraction in the religious masses” argument. What I did not agree with were Smallvice’s consistent attempts to brand the “Religious masses” as a team collaborating with the “minority fraction” to hijack political structures.
But likewise, I would argue that there is a “minority fraction within the Secular masses” that seeks to erase all opinions by the religious in the Public Sphere. As long as logical justifications are given for those opinions, I do not see anything wrong with expressing religious-motivated opinions in the Public Sphere.
And just to clarify, my “religious-motivated opinions” do not include opinions that call for the extermination of any racial, religious or other minority group on the basis that “God commands it”.
Just to emphasize Smallvice’s clear bias, he supports “isolate, divide and conquer” for the Secularists, but not for the Religious. How democratic is that?
By the way, for anyone else who has been false insinuating against me, I would like to tell you all one thing: It is disingenuous to label me as a member of the Religious Right or a Supporter when you people have absolutely no ideas of all my feelings or opinions with regards to religion.
Incidentally, as a reference, I am Libertarian-Left on Political Compass.
mice is nice (#31),
Yes, I suppose we can distant ourselves from the “anti-this” people, but not when they attack you personally.
hi Arix,
let others who attack first justify it. it is because you chose to attack early, not knowing you are the 1st. you are counter attacked. as the 1 who started the “fight” the responsibility is on you to justify it. with referance to this topic.
“Obama’s widely-anticipated speech to Muslim world”
if you do not speak out, nobody will know what you are thinking. when you do, & is heard some will respond. that is something you may well need to “deal with”. like if you feel somehow the Aware saga has cast Christianity in a bad light, try see the points from their view, its alittle late now, with the barbed words being hurled, but not impossible.
i have read some, not all of Smallvice585 posts & sorry to disappoint you, i somehow agree with most of his (her?) points. there are people like him (or her?) who post like they do, luckily i never kenna BBQ, lol.
your attempts
////to patiently clarify Christian viewpoints and what exactly flows through moderate minds and their approach…////
will not work because it is not an act that follows through like how a small number of black sheeps acted in Aware saga. what you did only added fuel to the fire.
////Just to emphasize Smallvice’s clear bias, he supports “isolate, divide and conquer” for the Secularists, but not for the Religious.////
eh, isn’t this from some other article, please dun cross post ler, very confusing wan ler…
dun worry, you are not as extreme as you sound. if you do read some of my posts in other articles, you may realise i may not share similiar views with you on some issues but it does not mean i cannot disagree in civil manner.
chill. ;)
hi Arix,
Smallvice in post #24 is the kind of direct response to your 1st post.
////Please terminate your religious propaganda.////
the onus is on you to explain yourself if you are not. yes, it borders on personal attack.
on that how would you respond, may will either re-enforce their opinion on you as who they think you are or not. but in the end, one should be honest about oneself.
that maybe is what Obama’s speech is about. there is little point in making grand speeches if 1 does not live & breath what 1 preaches.
“words alone cannot convince adversaries.”
Hi Arix #28,
I didn’t say it is wrong to un-demonise religion. Neither did I say it is correct to demonise religion. However, I said it is right to call a spade a spade.
Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Dan Brown are neither secularists nor Singaporeans. If they truly want to wipe religion off the surface of Singapore and the Planet Earth, then they are not pragmatic enough to see how impossible it is to carry out such a tall order.
The only pragmatic thing to do is to establish how to insert faith-based values into the public sphere. No matter how flawed Religion is, Religion will not go away even if its followers are massacred and outlawing religion will only drive it underground.
Hi Arix #29 #30;;;;;Buddhism and Buddhist themselves are not interested in what Hindus think of what Buddhism is, or whether Lord Buddha is a reincarnation of Lord Vishnu(not Lord Krishna) etc etc..After all, Lord Buddha, early on, had rejected most of the major tenets of Hinduism; and a careful study of Buddhism will reveal that it is not an offshoot of Hinduism;;;;;And also, in Buddhism all extremes are rejected in form, conception,idea etc etc., not only in the narrow God or no-God concept.
Hi Arix #29 #30;;;;;Like Buddhism, Sikhism, the 5th largest organised-religion in the world, with about 25 million adherents world-wide, has also been called an offshoot of Hinduism;;;Using the same criteria and logic we can also say that Christanity is an offshoot of Judaism, and Islam is an offshoot of Christianity, can’t we?
.. equal administration of justice, .. doesn’t steal from the people, … when in power, they are ruthless and suppressing the right of others…
When I heard this portion, I think of the old man.
Hi Arix, religion is a very personal thing, so when you brought out a personal issue into an open discussion, do not expect people comments to only touch the surface, it will certainly become personal. At least to you. If you do not want “personal attack”
do not bring something that is so personal into the forum. If you cannot handle the heat do not enter the kitchen.
Hey guys, just to warn you all that there might be individuals and group of people sent to distract us from the real issues. They will twist the whole discussion and distract us away from the real issues. You can see them bringing a different issues into a topic…… Just ignore them.
A friend who have studies into Singapore politics told me about the possibility that the AWARE case was an issues played UP by the media instructed by the government to distract us from the GIC and Temasek loses issues.
Just be careful of their tactics.
hi Joel Low,
yes be careful we must. it goes to show how sly & determined some people are at distracting the masses from core issues at hand. i do hope with several lessons given in this short span of a few months, enough people wise up to such tactics & learn to see through the smoke screen.
Hi Joel Low#41;;Hi mice is nice#42;;;;;Guys, please don’t get so fearful, suspicious and paranoid. Nobody got personal. Arix with his intellectual arguments and passionate logical ideas certainly deserves a lot of credit. Don’t be so pessimistic in your outlook guys. How are the people going to instigate change into a more liberal atmosphere if every other guy is going to fall into the “ostrich-syndrome” that old counter-productive denial of reality.
budamax1952,
Don’t be taken in by Arix’s arguments or get buttered by his range of vocabularies. Yes, we need not just a liberal atmosphere to discuss ideas and instigate change, but most importantly this atmosphere must be secular because no particular religion has or should have any monopoly on universal values.
We have to be wary of any uncompromising absolutist moral code that inherently rejects all other moral system. Arix doesn’t deserve any credit for rejecting secular nature of Singapore’s public sphere – something that is entrenched and well-accepted by Singaporeans from all walks of life, except religious extremists and other intolerant minorities.
Actually Arix’s ‘arguments’ if you may say have been disputed and debunked many times over here and in other blogs liao. It’s just another variant of the Thio Li-Ann argument against ‘secular humanism’.
It’s rather eloquently argued here http://www.yawningbread.org/
look under –
“Secular fundamentalists are oppressive, says Thio Li-Ann”
Thing is, many of us didn’t choose to reply to Arix is because we have moved on from the AWARE saga liao. Nothing to do with the ‘intellectualness’ of his points.
hi Zefly,
i think we (you, me & some others here) should cut Arix some slack. to err is human, Arix despite what has been posted earlier, there is a lull in posting. some people do have to ability to change for the better, we should allow space for that change to take place. let’s have some faith?
////Thing is, many of us didn’t choose to reply to Arix is because we have moved on from the AWARE saga liao. Nothing to do with the ‘intellectualness’ of his points.////
words like this adds fuel to the fire.
qoute from the article above,
“It is easier to start wars than to end them. It is easier to blame others than to look inward; to see what is different about someone than to find the things we share. But we should choose the right path, not just the easy path.”
dun draw Arix into “retalliate” mode again leh? ;)
Hi Zefly,
I concur it is time to stop flogging the dead horse. The horse is already dead. It is not going to turn Zombie or get resurrected 3 days after its death.
buda(#43),
Thanks a million.:D
Zef (#45),
*sigh*
Eloquence is not equal to “well thought through”. And in this particular case, Alex Au is biased. Well, he is always biased, but in the AWARE Saga he is acting as an Interested Party, being that he is after all the leader of Singapore’s Pink Lobby.
That’s all.
buda(#39),
It is historically correct to say that Christianity is an offshoot of Judaism (although some Christians will disagree), but not so to say that Islam is an offshoot of Christianity. Islam and Christianity developed independently of each other, whereas Christianity developed from within Israel.