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Politics : Islam, The Message -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: AmericanVoter who wrote (21)	11/1/2001 5:11:51 AM
From: joseph krinsky	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 758

Denouncing does get people somewhere. By keeping quiet, it enables them to continue to carry out a message without opposition. People are encouraged to "join" because they equate silence with approval. When numbers become large, things are important. If there are 1 billion muslims in the world, he only has to influence 1/10 of one per cent to have quite the congregation.

To: AmericanVoter who wrote (21)	11/1/2001 6:23:45 AM
From: Don Pueblo	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 758

I want to make sure I understand your point: Bin Laden and the Taliban are insane people... They claim they are interpreting "Islam" [the words of the prophet] "correctly", but they are not correct... Muslims should publicly debate Bin Laden and the Taliban and expose them as insane people... Japan and Germany are where they are today because they were forbidden to spend much on military... The biggest fight is to educate everyone on what Islam is... **** I have some problems with your theory. First, we might agree that one of the things that makes an insane person insane is the fact that they are unable to tell right from wrong, or reality from some hallucination. Secondly, while I agree with your supposition that the bad guys are not interpreting the words of the prophet "correctly" (your word), I think we can agree that this has been going on for at least 700 years in this case, and thousands of years in the case of at least one other organized religion. One could argue that the difference between Catholics and Baptists is that someone has not interpreted the words of the prophet "correctly". Thirdly, Japan and Germany are where they are today because they were at one point the enemies of the rest of the civilized world, and they were defeated at great cost in extensive military actions and forced to change their tunes...THEN they were constrained. The first thing you do with an insane murdering bastard is to stop him from acting bad. Then you can try to rehabilitate him - if he survives Step One. Public debate with a group of people that is actively involved in trying to kill you is risky at best and folly at worst, even in the best of times, simply because if a person is insane, he - by definition - cannot tell the difference between right and wrong, and he's doing everything he can to murder you in the meantime. Therefore, you cannot fully trust an insane person, because you cannot be sure what their next action will be. But trying to align the Bin Ladens of this world with "similar" religious fundamentalist movements in order to make Bin Laden more understandable is, in my opinion, doomed. Bin Laden has declared himself an outlaw to civilization. The restraints of civilization do not apply to someone who has declared himself outside the umbrella of civilization. This is simple logic. In his mind, he can do anything he wants as long as he does it to "infidels". Infidels, by his definition, are sub-human. Cutting an infidel's throat is a righteous act, for no other reason than the fact that he or she is an infidel. For you to claim that this point of view is a result of a misinterpretation of the words of a holy prophet is...well...naive. It all boils down to one simple thing. Religion is defined as "Belief in and reverence for a supernatural power or powers regarded as creator and governor of the universe." We have on this planet many people who do not agree on dogma. The vast majority of them are trying to simply survive. Survival requires one of two things - either you exterminate all the people that don't agree with your dogma, or you learn to live with them in peace. Where Bin Laden has gone insane is the point where he decided that his troubles were caused by someone other than himself. He decided to blame someone else, and it's not a big leap from that to "Kill 'em all". He's hallucinating. His world does not exist outside his own skull. He wants to move the clock back 700 years and start civilization over again, using his rules. It ain't gonna happen. He's nuts. He's a very dangerous mofo, and he is going to die, along with his pals. He's gone over to the Dark Side. He's the tool of evil, and he's paying lip service to a religion for one reason only - it helps him recruit other insane bastards. We've seen it before, and we will probably see it again. 700 years ago, Islam was oppressed unjustly. So were Jews, Buddhists, Christians, and everyone else probably. If there is an afterlife, or if reincarnation exists, then Bin Laden will come back as a sand flea until he gets his shit straight. In the meantime, for the good of the collective, he and his buddies are dead. Too bad, so sad. They screwed up, and they will pay the ultimate price for their crimes against the rest of the human beings on this planet. In this time and in this place, I fear that is the only "education" that will make sense to them. So, my friend, it's not about educating lunatics or misinterpreting religious dogma as much as it is about the survival of civilization on this planet. The rest of us intend for civilization to move forward. Not back to a tent in the desert 700 years ago where we can beat the shit our of our wives any time we feel like it, but out into the rest of the solar system and beyond, with more than one prophet and more than one road to salvation...at least until something makes more sense than a suicide attack on people in some foreign country whose only "crime" was going to the "wrong" church. With him or without him and the other insane bastards (of all dogmas) that think the same way he does, we are going forward. He's overdrawn his spiritual account, and he is, as they say in Hollywood, the Flaming Bearded Mummy from Uranus. Toast-O-Rama. Hiss-twa. Body temp = room temp. Then he can move on to taking the dictionary to whatever it was he failed to understand in his book.