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Politics : Middle East Politics -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: StormRider who wrote (603)	1/20/2002 9:55:08 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6945

Stormrider, Militant Islam is not the action of a few nutcases. Every religion has those. Militant Islam is a well-organized and very well funded (thank you, Saudi Arabia) political movement. The political movement is totalitarian, puritanical, Wahabbi, and is devoted to 'purifying' the Umma (lands of Islam) by setting up Sharia states and killing, subjugating or expelling all infidels on Muslim ground. Militant Islam has many adherents. Over 70,000 men passed through the Al Quaeda training camps in Afghanistan alone. The doctrines of militant Islam were behind the Taliban, caused the civil war in Algeria (130,000 dead so far), are behind the atrocious Sudan regime, and in Shia flavor are behind the mullahs who run Iran. They animate Hizbullah (which gets about $100 million a year from Iran), Hamas, Muslim Brotherhood, Islamic Jihad, as well as Al Quaeda. They also (judging by the press and protests) have a significant minority of sympathisers among the general population. In short, we are not talking about a few crackpots here. The vast majority of Muslims may be peaceful (I sure hope so), but we are talking about the Islamists, the followers of Militant Islam -- a small but organized and dangerous minority.

To: StormRider who wrote (603)	1/21/2002 10:23:09 AM
From: Zeev Hed	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6945

Of course, when people "criticize" "Islam", they do not mean "all Islam", they refer to extreme elements of Islam. One of the main current problems with (not all) Islamic countries, is the fact that those countries have not yet adopted (as Turkey has) the principle of separation between religion and state. A second problem with Islam, is that it has no mechanism of evolution. The equivalent of "Chief of the Supreme Court" in Afghanistan was interviewed few weeks back, and he made clear that the Sharia will apply in post Taliban Afghanistan, just as during the Taliban regime, that means, adultery will be punished by stoning till death, thieves, will have their hands severed, and all other antiquated laws (antiquated in my view, of course, not necessarily theirs) will be adhered to. These laws stem from the same codex of laws set in the old testament, except that other religions that were based on that book, found ways to modify these narrow interpretations, and change these with time, as humanity evolves. Islam, does not have such a mechanism, and when there is no constitutional separation between religion and state, these become the source of extremism which is not just few "nutheads" but state extremism. Zeev