Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: Brumar89 who wrote (30857)	7/8/2000 4:55:04 PM
From: Thomas C. White	Respond to of 39621

Hello Brumar, First, I certainly do not in any way condone persecutions of any sort, regardless of which creed is persecuting which. There are basically two forms of sectarian violence: first, localized outbreaks that sometimes snowball into large-scale conflicts; and second, persecutions under a theocratic or quasi-theocratic regime or local government. Unfortunately history is rife with examples of both types, ranging from local pogroms against Jews in Eastern Europe and the wholesale slaughter of Moslems after the partition of India into India and Pakistan, to widespread persecutions of Moslems in Spain at the end of the 15th century, to state sanctions against other religions under radical Moslem regimes. In the former case (local outbreaks), there is usually some incident that serves as an initial excuse, and then things escalate. Whether or not it gets worse depends upon actions of the government in power. In terms of Moslem/Christian violence, in one case (Egypt), the government has been relatively effective at preventing local incidents from widening. In another case (Indonesia), the government has been completely remiss, has not stepped in, and thus things have raged on as they have. Basically, as to government sanctions, such as one finds in radical Moslem regimes, I don't believe that this is a characteristic of Islam in particular. Rather, it is what happens eventually any time that the prevalent religious entity becomes part of the state. I do not think that any religion that has been enshrined by the state has been able to resist the temptation eventually to persecute those of other faiths. Since 1979 (the Iranian revolution), we have been passing through a time of turmoil and activism in Islam, which has led to Islamic regimes and Islamic radicalism. As to Egypt, I have had a good deal of contact with Copts. There are several that work in my company's offices over there. The situation is kind of mixed. On the one hand, for the most part, the Egyptian government is pretty iron-handed about preventing violence against the Christian minority (which is overall about 10 percent of the population). In Cairo itself, my take is that Christians and Moslems get along very well, although there are more subtle discriminations such as Copts being underrepresented in government jobs. Actually, the government spends much more efforts tracking down radical Moslems of the Islamic Brotherhood; many have been imprisoned or hanged since they assassinated Sadat. You see more incidents of violence in the south of Egypt, where the majority of Copts live, and also where people are poorer and less educated than in the north. However, in truth they also do not occur very often, and where there has been some persecution of Copts in the south it has usually been the result of a local government doing something that it should not have been doing. As to the Sudan, I have spent a total of eight months there. On the one hand, the (Islamic) regime is engaging in many crimes against humanity. On the other hand, one has to be careful about buying into the idea that this is some kind of Moslem holy war. The civil war in south Sudan has been going on for about thirty years now, long before there was an Islamic regime there and long before anyone introduced a Moslem/Christian issue. The issues are actually far more racial and ethnic than religious. The south is primarily black African, mainly practicing tribal animist religions and speaking tribal languages (contrary to a lot of press reports, there are actually very few Christians among the rebel SPLA). The northerners have lighter skin and are Arabic speaking Moslems. There has always been a deep animosity between the north and the south, going back hundreds of years when slave raiders from the north would go south to kidnap southern tribesmen and sell them into (mainly British) slavery in the Khartoum slave markets. Also, most of Sudan's oil reserves are located in the south, so there are economic issues at stake as well. I do not mean to make light of the horrors the Islamic regime is causing in the south. I myself believe that the south should be allowed to form an independent country, because they are ethnically, linguistically, and religiously distinct from the north. But on the other hand, the SPLA has become very good over the last few years at portraying the conflict as having a Moslem/Christian basis when this is only one of many dimensions. Anyone who has watched this situation for several decades as I have (I first visited in 1977) knows better.