R
Robert Evans - The Comeback Kid
Guest
> If we're talking about spreading the disease of hate, I think one has to
> address the fact that the Koran, Islamic law, all Muslim governments (as
> well as their state-run media), many if not most Muslim mosques, and many
> if not most Muslim schools take people from the day they're born and
> brainwash them with pure hatred. Hatred for women, hatred for gays, hatred
> for "infidels." And teach them that "peace" equals
> full submission of all people to Allah, and that the end of history will
> be when the entire world is Muslim.
Are Christianity and Judaism any better then Islam in aspect of tolerance of gays? In practice, yes. Gays and lesbians in Christian world and in Israel are protected by civilian society, in spite of church (and Jewish Orthodox rabbies) homophobia. And Jewish and Christian religious institution's homophobia is not even closely as violent as Islamic homophobia.
In theory, on paper, Islam is not really worse then fairy tales of ours. Old Testament (common for Jews and Christians) condemns homosexuality by death, as a part of Ten Commendments. So, if one desires, everybody could find pieces of text in both Holy Quaran and Old/New Testaments which are... homophobic, anti-women, obscurantist etc... Doctor Laura in her chauvinist Yankee Doodle ignorance started quoting Quaran once as an example of "evil" book on her "show". Her Arab-American opponent smartly quoted back to her parts of New Testament which were at least as "evil" and "intolerant to other religions" as her piecemeal "Beverly Hills madam"-interpreted Quaran.
So, the question is, how seriously your average Muslim takes his/her Islam? Answer: very seriously indeed.... At least at Arab world. Your Acme Christian? Jew? Both Christians and Jews used to be overwhelmingly religious/observant/fanatical only three hundreds years ago... LUCKILY< NOT ANY MORE! About 50% of American Jews are marrying a Christian spouse nowadays... Praise the Lord!
About well over 90% of our Judeo-Christian civilization are taking religion... lightly. As a social thing, as an Sunday manifestation of ethnic pride (Polish, Italian, Ukrainian) in the eyes of their WASP neighbours, as a nice habit, which is supposed to be respected for the sake of the grandma... but not too seriously or too deeply. Even many deeply religious Christians and Jews are under influence of ideas of Enlightment (which is a good thing, of course) and are reinterpreting say, New Testament obviously anti-Semitic passages (Paul Testaments) and anti-women/unabashedly sexist passages (all over the Bible) as something totally opposite to what it was originally intended to be, which is again, perhaps a positive development. Better to misinterpret New Testament, then to burn and slay Jews and Arabs during their Crusades, as Medieval Europeans did in their Christian fanaticism trip during Dark Ages.
> I have no problem with an individual Muslim who isn't into Hitlerian
> racism, gender apartheid, opression of homosexuals, outlawing of
> "decadent" culture and pleasures, doesn't believe that
> democracy, science, and freedom are abohorant, or isn't sympathetic to
> terror-loving freaks who blow up pizza parlors full of teenagers. I have
> no problem with any Muslim who isn't what I call one of the Muslim
> freakazoids. But the Muslim freakazoids - or perhaps better put, the
> Muslim fascists - are great in number and not being met with much
> condemnation from the peace-loving, moderate Muslims who you claim are the
> majority.
Well, what about certain American lawyer from Cleveland, Ohio anti-Islamic bias? What about pizza parlors of West Bank and Gaza full of Palestinian teenagers relaxing and then... Israeli [American taxpayers-financed] planes suddenly coming out of the blue to bomb those Palestinian citizens as a retaliation for similar atavistically cruel acts of Palestinian terror? "Muslim freakazoids" is a cool catchphrase, obviously, but Israeli-Palestinian conflict is political in its core, not religious! Therefore, solution must be political to save lifes of Israeli and Palestinian pizza-eaters and... OK, I promised not to touch politics so here I would stop! We are discussing religions there, right?
Also, there are half billion Muslims around the world... and believe me, a small minority are radical. There are Muslim countries like Turkey (free westernized country), Malaysia (big way!), Indonesia (in spite of recent Bali act), Iran (relatively free elections, progressive president), Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan (pro-Western pro-Russian dictators, Russian sphere of influence) etc... where there are some significant achievements in science and infrastructure and inroads of democracy and industrial development recently took place. On the other hand, there are countries like Iraq and Saudi Arabia which are regressed in their societal development. And there are desperately poor and overpopulated countries like Pakistan which became the hotbeds to Islamic militancy. So, dear Oaf, all Islamic believers are very different and diverse from each other, with different languages, cultures, level of development and different degree of westernization et cetera, et cetera... By labeling all those diverse peoples and governments "islamic freakazoids", you just show your ignorance and utter lack of true info about Islam and Islamic peoples...
> In recent decades Islamic culture may have grown dangerously sick. I don't
> see why this is some horrible thing to speculate about. We've seen
> cultures become sick before. Nazi German culture in the 1930s was rather
> ill, no? So was Japanese culture in the same time period.
Oaf, did you take your body temperature lately? Winters in Cleveland are cold...
> I happened to be one who fully supported the rescue of Muslims from
> Milosevic's genocide. I also happened to be one who fully supported the
> toppling of the Taliban, so that maybe a new government could be built in
> Afghanistan where ALL types of Muslims can be free to practice the Islam
> THEY want to, and where people of other faiths or no faith can practice
> their personal beliefs as well.
Milocevic's genocide? Hmm, what about Bosnians and Croats genocide against ethnic Greek-Orthodox (Pravoslavnyx) Serbs? Again, Oaf, showing your Republican Party line...
> It could be that I'm fully aware of the efforts of these millions upon
> millions of moderate, peace-loving Muslims, who seek democracy, separation
> of church and state, the end of gender aprtheid, the right of homosexuals
> to live freely, and the right of "infidels" to put their
> children on a bus and not have them blown up. I know that such Muslims
> exist and in large numbers. What I don't know is what percentage of Islam
> they make up and how much they really care about their religion being
> currently dominated by fascists, and I don't think this is my fault.
> Opinion polls in some Muslim majority countries are rather frightening.
> For example, I read that 76% of Kuwaitis admire Usama bin Laden. But when
> I meet somebody I make it a point to meet them with a clean slate and
> judge them as an individual. Every person I meet, I tell myself, don't
> make any assumptions about this person. However, I do reserve the right to
> think critically about belief systems. I have no obligation to give
> automatic respect to a belief system. And most certainly not to a
> religion, as religions are a bunch of poppycock made up off the top of
> people's heads. No, no religion will ever get respect from me. Tolerance
> of those who practice them, yes, but not because they practice that
> religion. That respect would be because who of who they are as inviduals
> as a whole, separate and apart from what religion they happen to dig. And
> tolerance does not mean I have to like Islam any more than I'd have to
> like Nazism or communism. I'm quite sure the world would be better off
> with no religion, most especially with no Islam, but that's not for me to
> dictate, only to hope for.
Hmm, I heard huge majority of Kuwaitis and Egyptians love America and things American... Perhaps, social statistics is a very inprecise science.... If researcher is anti-Arab, he & she would always deliberately find an vehemently anti-American sample of populace for observation. At least, by my private experience, Arabs & Muslims are as human as Jews and Blacks and Whites... Also, depends how question was precisely asked: if an Acme political pollster would ask an average Egyptian: "Do you agree with Saddam Hussein that Bush Administration is anti-Arab biased and Israel could perpetrate her anti-Palestinian atrocities only because American support?", I'm sure around 90% of Muslims would say "YES", but it does not mean they support Saddam at any degree.
Oaf, be honest with yourself, you don't know a shit about Islam, you are just trying to show up your vaguely Zionist sympathies...
> The first time I remember thinking about Islam was when I heard that some
> kooks in Iran issued a death sentence on Salman Rushdie for writing a
> book. Since then I've seen ever-escalating atrocities, intolerance, and
> fascism rising in Islamic culture. The kind of thing people say they're
> afraid of in America if a Jerry Falwell ever because President. Well,
> Jerry Falwell isn't going to be president, but Islamic versions of him,
> and even far worse, have taken over the Islamic world.
I heard Iranian clergy took this particular "fatwah" (death sentence) back under pressure from Iranian secularists...
> Sadly, what I've NOT seen much of are Muslim-led demonstrations and
> marches condemning the murders of thousands and thousands of innocent
> people by extremist Muslims world-wide in the past couple decades. I know
> they have the ability to speak out, as they've spoken quite a bit about
> their concerns of real or (more often) imagined opressions of Muslims in
> the United States and other western countries since 9/11. They've even
> convinced YOU that we're supposedly torturing the terrorist soldiers we
> captured and placed in Guatanamo Bay before they could unleash
> unprecedented mass-murders, while at the same time we have to pull their
> teeth to get unambiguous condemnations of people who purposely target,
> say, a bus full of jewish kids. Is it too much to ask that they condemn
> terror-loving barbarian savages with equal vigor as they attack the
> alleged conditions at Guantanomo Bay? Or, say, the supposed unfairness of
> portraying a terrorist as a Muslim in a Hollywood film (as if that's so
> far-fetched!)? I never have trouble finding outraged Muslims in the media
> when a movie opens that happens to have a Muslim terrorist character. But
> when three doctors were murdered in Yemen recently, I didn't see much
> concern over their religion being hijacked by extremists.
As somebody working with movie industry as an computer Cad & PhotoShop specialist, I would say Muslim representation in Hollywood is around zero (Omar Sheriff ), while big guys in Hollywood are nowadays (and always were) ... peoples with Eastern European-sounding names like Warner brothers, Zanuck, Katzenberg, Geffen, Spielberg.... No wonder, there are movies so primitively anti-Muslim biased like 'Father of the Bride', not to mention anti-Arab "golden oldies" like "Cannonball 2"... While Israelis are shown in "heroic" movies like 'Exsodus' with Paul Newman and 'Operation Entebbe'... I'm not saying that Hollywood doesn't have it's share of glory days and great Jewish-American actors & producers, I'm saying, that too many of them automatically took Israeli side of the story, hook and swallow...
> All I've seen are individual Muslims here and there, no organized effort
> to make sure mainstream Islam isn't confused with fascist Islam. And now
> we have a situation where extremist Muslims are threatening to murder
> MILLIONS of innocent people worldwide, from India to Australia to the USA
> to Africa to Indonesia. And still, the moderate Muslim world is strangely
> silent. Where was the Muslim protest of the Nigerian riot? I saw that news
> report and it boggled my mind that in 2002 people could actually murder
> innocent people over a beauty pageant! I read articles from Muslims who
> condemned the journalist who supposedly "provoked" this riot,
> when all she really did was excersize her free speech (repsecting free
> speech is not something the Koran teaches...). This is but one example,
> and at some point one has to have the guts to say: Maybe it's time Muslims
> - in between telling America how America must examine itself - should
> start examining the state of their culture and their belief system.
Of course there are progressive Muslims out there... The problem is, American media is silent about them... For example, Lebanese public opinion condemned the planning of conference of Holocaust deniers in Beirut... After many Arab public figures petitioned Lebanese government, permission for conference was withdrawn...
> Now, I happen to think Christianity is pretty nutso too and has caused
> lots of horrors in this world. No one ever calls me or anyone else
> "intolerant" or "hateful" for saying this on this
> board. You see that in this thread. People are open to examining
> Christianity, but somehow Islam is something no one's allowed to say a bad
> word about. Well, you claim that in 2003 Islam is a "fundemantlly a
> better religion" than Christianity. Yet IMO, if there were weekly
> atrocities committed by a significant number of Christians worldwide over
> recent years and to the present, with the support of Christian
> governments, many Christian religious leaders, numerous Christian
> organizations (and even charities!), and bred by many Christian schools,
> that this would be met by marches, demonstrations, and protests to make
> clear that these wackjobs in no way represent mainstream Christianity. But
> then again, I guess I can't prove it, because thousands and thousands of
> innocent people are not currently being murdered, and millions more not
> currently being targeted for death, by a worldwide network of Christian
> terrorist cells.
> Christianity has had dark periods just like Islam. The differnce, IMO, is
> that Christianity has managed to somewhat reform itself to fit in with the
> modern world, even though it's still and forever a dark aged belief system
> better left behind. Western civilization had a renassaince and so forth.
> Furthemore, it's a fortunate thing that the majority of people claiming to
> be Christian in western first world democracies tend to say they're
> Chrsitian just to fit in, and don't actually believe the rubbish at their
> core. Islam, OTOH, has yet to adapt to the modern world, and thus, with
> globalization, we're witnessing a clash between Islamic dark aged culture
> and modern civilization. I have full confidence that civilization will
> prevail over barbarian religious fanatics, but my concern is that too many
> people will die before Islam accepts its need to reform and reinvent
> itself. And this is only made worse by the fact that moderate Muslims are
> oddly far too silent, and many of them are possibly a tad sympathetic.
> Anyway, I will never surrendor my right to free thought and free speech,
> and when someone tells me that Islam is not fair game for examination and
> criticism, that feels like thought-policing political correctness to me.
> Islam is not a race. I didn't realize that if you have a belief or
> philosphy that happens to also be a religion that it deserves automatic
> respect and deference. But then I didn't take religon courses in college,
> as I feel the entire religion departments of all universities are mostly a
> waste of time. The fact that millions and millions of people happen to be
> Muslim also doesn't impress me. But obviously when I speak of savage,
> terror-loving barbarians from Hell plaguing the earth at this time, I'm
> speaking of people who have joined the ranks of, or are sympathetic to,
> fascist organizations such as al Quaeda, and they have indeed plagued the
> earth for several decades now. That you thought I was speaking of every
> individual Muslim only further illuminates the crisis in that culture, and
> the need for sane, non-brainwashed Muslims to stand up and be counted.
OK. Some of Oaf words are true... Yet, both me and him ought to know about Islam much more before judging it.... We, Americans are so self-centered, we are easily tempted to stereotype all Islamic world like a den of "freakazoids" and sinister murderers. Luckily for all of us, the reality is much brighter, and many in the Islamic world, especially among college-educated peoples are pro-western and pro-american.... To put all Islamic peoples in the roster of "our enemies", as Oaf is doing now... is to make the best birthday gift for Bin Laden and his clan of real anti-American and anti-humanity murderers and terrorists... In opposite, we must to seek friends among Islamic world, only this way the victory at War against radical Islamic terror could be achieved!
> address the fact that the Koran, Islamic law, all Muslim governments (as
> well as their state-run media), many if not most Muslim mosques, and many
> if not most Muslim schools take people from the day they're born and
> brainwash them with pure hatred. Hatred for women, hatred for gays, hatred
> for "infidels." And teach them that "peace" equals
> full submission of all people to Allah, and that the end of history will
> be when the entire world is Muslim.
Are Christianity and Judaism any better then Islam in aspect of tolerance of gays? In practice, yes. Gays and lesbians in Christian world and in Israel are protected by civilian society, in spite of church (and Jewish Orthodox rabbies) homophobia. And Jewish and Christian religious institution's homophobia is not even closely as violent as Islamic homophobia.
In theory, on paper, Islam is not really worse then fairy tales of ours. Old Testament (common for Jews and Christians) condemns homosexuality by death, as a part of Ten Commendments. So, if one desires, everybody could find pieces of text in both Holy Quaran and Old/New Testaments which are... homophobic, anti-women, obscurantist etc... Doctor Laura in her chauvinist Yankee Doodle ignorance started quoting Quaran once as an example of "evil" book on her "show". Her Arab-American opponent smartly quoted back to her parts of New Testament which were at least as "evil" and "intolerant to other religions" as her piecemeal "Beverly Hills madam"-interpreted Quaran.
So, the question is, how seriously your average Muslim takes his/her Islam? Answer: very seriously indeed.... At least at Arab world. Your Acme Christian? Jew? Both Christians and Jews used to be overwhelmingly religious/observant/fanatical only three hundreds years ago... LUCKILY< NOT ANY MORE! About 50% of American Jews are marrying a Christian spouse nowadays... Praise the Lord!
About well over 90% of our Judeo-Christian civilization are taking religion... lightly. As a social thing, as an Sunday manifestation of ethnic pride (Polish, Italian, Ukrainian) in the eyes of their WASP neighbours, as a nice habit, which is supposed to be respected for the sake of the grandma... but not too seriously or too deeply. Even many deeply religious Christians and Jews are under influence of ideas of Enlightment (which is a good thing, of course) and are reinterpreting say, New Testament obviously anti-Semitic passages (Paul Testaments) and anti-women/unabashedly sexist passages (all over the Bible) as something totally opposite to what it was originally intended to be, which is again, perhaps a positive development. Better to misinterpret New Testament, then to burn and slay Jews and Arabs during their Crusades, as Medieval Europeans did in their Christian fanaticism trip during Dark Ages.> I have no problem with an individual Muslim who isn't into Hitlerian
> racism, gender apartheid, opression of homosexuals, outlawing of
> "decadent" culture and pleasures, doesn't believe that
> democracy, science, and freedom are abohorant, or isn't sympathetic to
> terror-loving freaks who blow up pizza parlors full of teenagers. I have
> no problem with any Muslim who isn't what I call one of the Muslim
> freakazoids. But the Muslim freakazoids - or perhaps better put, the
> Muslim fascists - are great in number and not being met with much
> condemnation from the peace-loving, moderate Muslims who you claim are the
> majority.
Well, what about certain American lawyer from Cleveland, Ohio anti-Islamic bias?
What about pizza parlors of West Bank and Gaza full of Palestinian teenagers relaxing and then... Israeli [American taxpayers-financed] planes suddenly coming out of the blue to bomb those Palestinian citizens as a retaliation for similar atavistically cruel acts of Palestinian terror? "Muslim freakazoids" is a cool catchphrase, obviously, but Israeli-Palestinian conflict is political in its core, not religious! Therefore, solution must be political to save lifes of Israeli and Palestinian pizza-eaters and... OK, I promised not to touch politics so here I would stop! We are discussing religions there, right?Also, there are half billion Muslims around the world... and believe me, a small minority are radical. There are Muslim countries like Turkey (free westernized country), Malaysia (big way!), Indonesia (in spite of recent Bali act), Iran (relatively free elections, progressive president), Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan (pro-Western pro-Russian dictators, Russian sphere of influence) etc... where there are some significant achievements in science and infrastructure and inroads of democracy and industrial development recently took place. On the other hand, there are countries like Iraq and Saudi Arabia which are regressed in their societal development. And there are desperately poor and overpopulated countries like Pakistan which became the hotbeds to Islamic militancy. So, dear Oaf, all Islamic believers are very different and diverse from each other, with different languages, cultures, level of development and different degree of westernization et cetera, et cetera... By labeling all those diverse peoples and governments "islamic freakazoids", you just show your ignorance and utter lack of true info about Islam and Islamic peoples...
> In recent decades Islamic culture may have grown dangerously sick. I don't
> see why this is some horrible thing to speculate about. We've seen
> cultures become sick before. Nazi German culture in the 1930s was rather
> ill, no? So was Japanese culture in the same time period.
Oaf, did you take your body temperature lately? Winters in Cleveland are cold...
> I happened to be one who fully supported the rescue of Muslims from
> Milosevic's genocide. I also happened to be one who fully supported the
> toppling of the Taliban, so that maybe a new government could be built in
> Afghanistan where ALL types of Muslims can be free to practice the Islam
> THEY want to, and where people of other faiths or no faith can practice
> their personal beliefs as well.
Milocevic's genocide? Hmm, what about Bosnians and Croats genocide against ethnic Greek-Orthodox (Pravoslavnyx) Serbs? Again, Oaf, showing your Republican Party line...
> It could be that I'm fully aware of the efforts of these millions upon
> millions of moderate, peace-loving Muslims, who seek democracy, separation
> of church and state, the end of gender aprtheid, the right of homosexuals
> to live freely, and the right of "infidels" to put their
> children on a bus and not have them blown up. I know that such Muslims
> exist and in large numbers. What I don't know is what percentage of Islam
> they make up and how much they really care about their religion being
> currently dominated by fascists, and I don't think this is my fault.
> Opinion polls in some Muslim majority countries are rather frightening.
> For example, I read that 76% of Kuwaitis admire Usama bin Laden. But when
> I meet somebody I make it a point to meet them with a clean slate and
> judge them as an individual. Every person I meet, I tell myself, don't
> make any assumptions about this person. However, I do reserve the right to
> think critically about belief systems. I have no obligation to give
> automatic respect to a belief system. And most certainly not to a
> religion, as religions are a bunch of poppycock made up off the top of
> people's heads. No, no religion will ever get respect from me. Tolerance
> of those who practice them, yes, but not because they practice that
> religion. That respect would be because who of who they are as inviduals
> as a whole, separate and apart from what religion they happen to dig. And
> tolerance does not mean I have to like Islam any more than I'd have to
> like Nazism or communism. I'm quite sure the world would be better off
> with no religion, most especially with no Islam, but that's not for me to
> dictate, only to hope for.
Hmm, I heard huge majority of Kuwaitis and Egyptians love America and things American... Perhaps, social statistics is a very inprecise science.... If researcher is anti-Arab, he & she would always deliberately find an vehemently anti-American sample of populace for observation. At least, by my private experience, Arabs & Muslims are as human as Jews and Blacks and Whites... Also, depends how question was precisely asked: if an Acme political pollster would ask an average Egyptian: "Do you agree with Saddam Hussein that Bush Administration is anti-Arab biased and Israel could perpetrate her anti-Palestinian atrocities only because American support?", I'm sure around 90% of Muslims would say "YES", but it does not mean they support Saddam at any degree.
Oaf, be honest with yourself, you don't know a shit about Islam, you are just trying to show up your vaguely Zionist sympathies...
> The first time I remember thinking about Islam was when I heard that some
> kooks in Iran issued a death sentence on Salman Rushdie for writing a
> book. Since then I've seen ever-escalating atrocities, intolerance, and
> fascism rising in Islamic culture. The kind of thing people say they're
> afraid of in America if a Jerry Falwell ever because President. Well,
> Jerry Falwell isn't going to be president, but Islamic versions of him,
> and even far worse, have taken over the Islamic world.
I heard Iranian clergy took this particular "fatwah" (death sentence) back under pressure from Iranian secularists...
> Sadly, what I've NOT seen much of are Muslim-led demonstrations and
> marches condemning the murders of thousands and thousands of innocent
> people by extremist Muslims world-wide in the past couple decades. I know
> they have the ability to speak out, as they've spoken quite a bit about
> their concerns of real or (more often) imagined opressions of Muslims in
> the United States and other western countries since 9/11. They've even
> convinced YOU that we're supposedly torturing the terrorist soldiers we
> captured and placed in Guatanamo Bay before they could unleash
> unprecedented mass-murders, while at the same time we have to pull their
> teeth to get unambiguous condemnations of people who purposely target,
> say, a bus full of jewish kids. Is it too much to ask that they condemn
> terror-loving barbarian savages with equal vigor as they attack the
> alleged conditions at Guantanomo Bay? Or, say, the supposed unfairness of
> portraying a terrorist as a Muslim in a Hollywood film (as if that's so
> far-fetched!)? I never have trouble finding outraged Muslims in the media
> when a movie opens that happens to have a Muslim terrorist character. But
> when three doctors were murdered in Yemen recently, I didn't see much
> concern over their religion being hijacked by extremists.
As somebody working with movie industry as an computer Cad & PhotoShop specialist, I would say Muslim representation in Hollywood is around zero (Omar Sheriff
), while big guys in Hollywood are nowadays (and always were) ... peoples with Eastern European-sounding names like Warner brothers, Zanuck, Katzenberg, Geffen, Spielberg.... No wonder, there are movies so primitively anti-Muslim biased like 'Father of the Bride', not to mention anti-Arab "golden oldies" like "Cannonball 2"... While Israelis are shown in "heroic" movies like 'Exsodus' with Paul Newman and 'Operation Entebbe'... I'm not saying that Hollywood doesn't have it's share of glory days and great Jewish-American actors & producers, I'm saying, that too many of them automatically took Israeli side of the story, hook and swallow...> All I've seen are individual Muslims here and there, no organized effort
> to make sure mainstream Islam isn't confused with fascist Islam. And now
> we have a situation where extremist Muslims are threatening to murder
> MILLIONS of innocent people worldwide, from India to Australia to the USA
> to Africa to Indonesia. And still, the moderate Muslim world is strangely
> silent. Where was the Muslim protest of the Nigerian riot? I saw that news
> report and it boggled my mind that in 2002 people could actually murder
> innocent people over a beauty pageant! I read articles from Muslims who
> condemned the journalist who supposedly "provoked" this riot,
> when all she really did was excersize her free speech (repsecting free
> speech is not something the Koran teaches...). This is but one example,
> and at some point one has to have the guts to say: Maybe it's time Muslims
> - in between telling America how America must examine itself - should
> start examining the state of their culture and their belief system.
Of course there are progressive Muslims out there... The problem is, American media is silent about them... For example, Lebanese public opinion condemned the planning of conference of Holocaust deniers in Beirut... After many Arab public figures petitioned Lebanese government, permission for conference was withdrawn...
> Now, I happen to think Christianity is pretty nutso too and has caused
> lots of horrors in this world. No one ever calls me or anyone else
> "intolerant" or "hateful" for saying this on this
> board. You see that in this thread. People are open to examining
> Christianity, but somehow Islam is something no one's allowed to say a bad
> word about. Well, you claim that in 2003 Islam is a "fundemantlly a
> better religion" than Christianity. Yet IMO, if there were weekly
> atrocities committed by a significant number of Christians worldwide over
> recent years and to the present, with the support of Christian
> governments, many Christian religious leaders, numerous Christian
> organizations (and even charities!), and bred by many Christian schools,
> that this would be met by marches, demonstrations, and protests to make
> clear that these wackjobs in no way represent mainstream Christianity. But
> then again, I guess I can't prove it, because thousands and thousands of
> innocent people are not currently being murdered, and millions more not
> currently being targeted for death, by a worldwide network of Christian
> terrorist cells.
> Christianity has had dark periods just like Islam. The differnce, IMO, is
> that Christianity has managed to somewhat reform itself to fit in with the
> modern world, even though it's still and forever a dark aged belief system
> better left behind. Western civilization had a renassaince and so forth.
> Furthemore, it's a fortunate thing that the majority of people claiming to
> be Christian in western first world democracies tend to say they're
> Chrsitian just to fit in, and don't actually believe the rubbish at their
> core. Islam, OTOH, has yet to adapt to the modern world, and thus, with
> globalization, we're witnessing a clash between Islamic dark aged culture
> and modern civilization. I have full confidence that civilization will
> prevail over barbarian religious fanatics, but my concern is that too many
> people will die before Islam accepts its need to reform and reinvent
> itself. And this is only made worse by the fact that moderate Muslims are
> oddly far too silent, and many of them are possibly a tad sympathetic.
> Anyway, I will never surrendor my right to free thought and free speech,
> and when someone tells me that Islam is not fair game for examination and
> criticism, that feels like thought-policing political correctness to me.
> Islam is not a race. I didn't realize that if you have a belief or
> philosphy that happens to also be a religion that it deserves automatic
> respect and deference. But then I didn't take religon courses in college,
> as I feel the entire religion departments of all universities are mostly a
> waste of time. The fact that millions and millions of people happen to be
> Muslim also doesn't impress me. But obviously when I speak of savage,
> terror-loving barbarians from Hell plaguing the earth at this time, I'm
> speaking of people who have joined the ranks of, or are sympathetic to,
> fascist organizations such as al Quaeda, and they have indeed plagued the
> earth for several decades now. That you thought I was speaking of every
> individual Muslim only further illuminates the crisis in that culture, and
> the need for sane, non-brainwashed Muslims to stand up and be counted.
OK. Some of Oaf words are true... Yet, both me and him ought to know about Islam much more before judging it.... We, Americans are so self-centered, we are easily tempted to stereotype all Islamic world like a den of "freakazoids" and sinister murderers. Luckily for all of us, the reality is much brighter, and many in the Islamic world, especially among college-educated peoples are pro-western and pro-american.... To put all Islamic peoples in the roster of "our enemies", as Oaf is doing now... is to make the best birthday gift for Bin Laden and his clan of real anti-American and anti-humanity murderers and terrorists... In opposite, we must to seek friends among Islamic world, only this way the victory at War against radical Islamic terror could be achieved!
