Addi,
Well, again, I am more optimistic than you. There is no need to turn the hearts of 5 million Mullahs. It is enough that the rulers of Arab/Islamic countries will accept peaceful coexistence as the way to solve their problems. I don't really care what they do inside their own countries. If they wish to run them by the law of the Koran, its their problem (personally I think the West, and the Soviet Union at the time, made a grave mistake when they started meddling with the Arabs as long ago as the turn of the last century. We should have left them as nomads of the desert and never interfered. We could have survived better without their oil. But this is a side issue).
It looks like we have a student of Islam on this thread after all. I tend to agree with Duke, that the overall theme of the Koran is not of aggression, but rather self defense. The trouble is as was pointed out here, how do they interpret "self defense". Unfortunately, most Muslim religious leaders are very loose on this definition. Once they label an action as "self defense" there is no limit to their cruelty towards others, as according to the Koran, everything is "kosher" in the fight of "self defense". This is why there was Sept. 11, and why there were three suicide attacks on Israel today, all in "defense" of one thing or another.
This is my humble opinion and I hope I am right.
GDA |
