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Politics : War -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mani1 who wrote (10490)	12/31/2001 7:37:25 AM
From: William B. Kohn	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 23908

Mani, you defend your religion and that is understandable. Many hold their believes very dear. Explain to me how your religion fosters love of others. Does your religion and your holy books as a collection: 1. Suggest that those who don't believe should be forced to convert or be killed. 2. Force people of the book to accept a 'lower status' than muslim's in day to day life in a predominately Muslim country. 3. Provide fully equal protect to all. I've been reading what happened to Jews in Yemen, how the Jews were forced to live as very unequal partners in Ottoman Israel proper and I wonder given the 'out of context' versions of Islam I've read here, how you can square the realities of what those who believe in your faith do, from what you claim your religion is. Can you point to one predominantly Islamic culture today where the form of compassionate Islam is preached. Somalia, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, Iraq, Egypt, Lebanon, Indonesia, Malasia, Pakestan, where? There is an adage which I believe holds true here, "If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, looks like a duck, it must be a duck." Many people use a similar analogy to your faith. How are we wrong? willyb

To: Mani1 who wrote (10490)	12/31/2001 10:39:54 AM
From: goldsnow	Respond to of 23908

Mani, again, one can sway a discussion, if chances in that millions in Western culture would end-up on crack-cocain, with far fewer in Muslem culture, and so on...The point of the discussion are not social evils or "misunderstanding" of "goodness" of the religion (s), but the very fact that secular forces are all but supressed in Muslim Civilization, thus setting a stage for confrontation of Muslems vs non-Muslems, historical reality...Not different from rise of the Christianity, Crusades and Dark Ages...Times are different of course...The fact that Muslems are so numerous exacerbate this confrontation, not diminish it...

To: Mani1 who wrote (10490)	12/31/2001 11:26:58 AM
From: RetiredNow	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 23908

LOL. When you say it, it sure does sound closed minded. However, I am not saying my religion is right. I'm saying that I've observed that all the other religions in the modern world are not so violent. I know that with the Catholics back in the medieval ages there was the Inquisition and then with the Christians there was the crusades, etc. But in today's modern world you very rarely see violence associated with religion. The two standouts are Islam and the Irish and British. Even the Irish and British are starting to settle down, whereas it seems the Muslims are starting to go on the warpath. Prior to 9/11, I used to think it was because of the poverty and the lopsided support the U.S. gave to Israel. Believe it or not, I used to more often than not think that the U.S. was misguided and that we needed a more balanced approach to the Palestinian situation. However, after 9/11, I started to read my history books and read everything I could find on the Middle East and Islam, including the Qur'an. The more I found, the more I started to realize that the violence goes beyond just simple hatred of the west. It seems that the Qur'an itself is a violent text. What's more is that yes, Osama achieved his objective of waking the West up to Islam. We are all now trying to understand it and what we are finding is abhorrent. We just don't understand how any religious text could so plainly subjugate women and urge a people to violence as the solution to problems. One other thing, I'm saying what I feel here like everyone else, but you won't catch me actively doing anything against any person of any religion, including Islam. I think that the backlash I've seen on the news is equally abhorrent. When they show me the bullet holes in glass of some Muslim organizations, it makes me ashamed to American. It's just not part of our culture to be so full of hatred for anybody. Any simpleton knows that violence begets violence. However, at the end of the day, I'm hoping that the moderate Muslims will wake up and realize that their whole way of life is in jeopardy. If they don't quell the extremism and conclusively spell out for all Muslims that the violent passages that exhort killing of non-Islamic people and the subjugation of women are abrogated in later passages or are taken out of context or whatever it takes to get Muslims to stop thining that violence is the solution, then what you'll have is a true war of the West (actually the Rest, because no one in the world condones terrorism) against Islam. It took 1400 years for Islam to reach 1 billion people and to make the great strides that it has in today's society. It took 1 day for Osama to throw a blood-stained smear on the religion, which will take decades to wash off. Regardless of whether you agree with me on my take on Islam, you will most probably agree that the world's view on Islam has changed dramatically since 9/11. Many who felt that Islam was just one of the three great peaceful religions in the world, now feel directly threatened by Islam. Is that really what sane Muslims want? Wouldn't it be easier if we all just lived in peace, each of us able to believe and worship as we desire? One last last thing. :) You mentioned the slaves. Yes, that was another moment in history that no one is proud of. But Americans paid the debt we owed on that one. What everyone forgets is that we had a massive Civil War that killed more Americans than all of our subsequent wars combined. That war was fought to free the slaves. So we paid that debt in blood and now people of any color or religion or sex have equal opportunities here in the U.S. It's funny how when people start to justify Islamic extremism they always point to the bad things in Christianity's past or the U.S.'s past. But that only proves that Islam is stuck in a state that the U.S. was a couple hundred years ago, or stuck in a state that Christianity or Catholicism was in back in the Medieval Ages. My response to those comparisons is that Islam needs to modernize and fast. Otherwise, you will find that Muslims will not be welcome anywhere in the world and that 1 billion people number will shring fast. BTW, many African-Americans convert to Islam because they find it a fitting religion for them. Then Islam's heroes like Osama refer to those same African-Americans with the pejorative term "slaves", as we saw on his latest video release. So it seems that Islam's heroes don't even treat converts on an equal footing. What does that say for Islam?