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Pastimes : Ask God -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Chris land who wrote (30831)	7/8/2000 12:33:54 AM
From: Thomas C. White	Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 39621

Chris, during the Gulf War, U.S. forces were not forbidden from having worship services in Saudi Arabia. They were forbidden from having any building on base set aside specifically as a church. Because it contains the city of Mecca, the place of pilgrimage for Moslems, Saudi Arabia forbids buildings to be set aside and consecrated as churches or synagogues. This part of their religious law was in effect long before U.S. soldiers got there. And Saudi Arabia did not ask U.S. forces to stage there. In fact, the reverse is true. The Saudis were actually pretty nervous about the whole Gulf War being staged from their country, although they agreed to it. As to Moslems considering it an honor to murder Christians, with all due respect, I think this is a bit extreme. I am very familiar with Arabic culture (I speak, read and write Arabic), and I myself spend a lot of time working in Moslem countries. I have for example been to Cairo five times in the last five months, and I find that I am actually a lot safer there than I am walking around at night in San Francisco. Cairo is loaded with Christian churches, a sizable minority in Egypt is of the Coptic Christian sect which has been there a lot longer than Christianity has been in Europe. I have had some very lively debates of Christianity versus Islam with Moslems in my time. For the most part, they are deeply respectful of both Christianity and Judaism, since Mohammad studied both of them extensively and considered them the "progenitor" religions of Islam. They do not believe that Christ is the son of God, they are completely monotheistic and do not believe in the Trinity, saints, or anything else divine other than God. However, most of their prophets before Mohammad are from the Old and New Testaments, and Jesus is actually held in particularly high regard in that sense. There are certainly fanatical Moslems around. And there is Christian/Moslem violence going on right now in some places, particularly parts of Indonesia. But you don't have to go any farther than Northern Ireland to find religious fanatics. And certainly in history the Moslems have seen their fair share of fanatics marching and slaughtering thousands on Crusades. I can also tell you that most Moslems know the Qur'an far better than most Christians know the Bible. Most of them pray to Allah at least five times a day, and with considerably more sincerity than most people here go to church.