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Politics : Palestine, facts and history -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: AmericanVoter who wrote (364)	6/20/2002 5:48:53 PM
From: ChinuSFO	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 770

Amein, let me again point this discussion towards the India/Pakistan direction and compare it with the Israeli/Palestine situation. The Indo/Pak situation has a greater potential for damage to humanity/human life. They say with one pull of the trigger 12 million people could die. That situation also has a 50 year history. Like some people on these threads are saying that there was no Palestine, we could also come up with a similar analogy with regard to Pakistan. Similarly there are lot of skirmishes, exchange of gun fire etc. where civilians are being killed. One day it is the militants from one side killing the civilians from the other side and so on. In short, the Indo-Pak situation rouses a lot of passion amongst the diputants which is similar to the Israeli/Palestenian situation. Now starts the difference. The Indo-Pak situation has been contained. Why? Because of the role the US played. The powers that be EU, Russia, China and the US jointly worked and projected themselves as honest brokers, fully neutral, and hence they earned the respect of India/Pakistan. The danger to the 12 million lives quickly evaporated and the US along with the others can rightfully claim credit for that. And here is where you start to see the difference between US's role in the Indo-Pak conflict and the Israel/Palestenian conflict. If US chooses to play the role of a neutral broker, then they can quickly start to save all the lives that are being lost, Israel as well as Palestine. Those lives continue to be lost not because of the brutality of the Israeli army, not because of the suicide bombers, but because of US' refusal to step in and warn both parties to put a halt or else…..? as they did with India and Pakistan. But sadly, the US, which has always strived to respect human life, refuses to adopt a neutral stance thereby portraying total disregard for the sanctity of that life. There now exists a runaway situation, where a madman like Ariel Sharon keeps chasing a aging man Arafat with the hope he can stop what is going on. And the US is just watching and standing by and being an accomplice with Israel and the suicide bombers in destroying human life. Just my two cents.

To: AmericanVoter who wrote (364)	6/22/2002 9:56:48 PM
From: lorne	Respond to of 770

Read if you dare>>>>> Testimonies: Why I Left Islam Conversions, apostates, and free-thinkers Muslims are triumphalists especially when they parrot the journalistic cliché that Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world, or when they present the testimony of someone who has "embraced Islam;" Islam, "that least huggable of faiths," as Rushdie calls it[1]. Frithjof Schuon, a Western convert to a mystical variety of Islam explains the Muslim mindset: The intellectual–and thereby the rational–foundation of Islam results in the average Muslim having a curious tendency to believe that non-Muslims either know that Islam is the truth and reject it out of pure obstinacy, or else are simply ignorant of it and can be converted by elementary explanations; that anyone should be able to oppose Islam with a good conscience quite exceeds the Muslims’ power of imagination, precisely because Islam coincides in his mind with the irresistible logic of things[2]. Despite appearances, the fact remains thousands have left Islam behind along with other childish beliefs from Father Christmas to the Tooth Fairy. A few courageous souls have not only resisted the "irresistible" but braving family and friends, social ostracism, mob violence, and state assassinations and executions, have also come out of the closet, and have made their unbelief a matter of public record: Salman Rushdie, Taslima Nasrin, Anwar Shaikh, Ali Sina, Mahmoud, Syed Mirza Ali, Mohsen, to name some of them. There was a remarkable article translated from the Algerian Arabic Daily, al-Yawm and published in the Courrier International[3] recently. It shows that the deterioration of the image of Islam during the Algerian crisis has played its part in the rise of conversions to Christianity and the adoption of its principles. What is happening and what has happened in Algeria, such as the massacres and killings [in the holy month of Ramadan, December, 2000, alone, 340 people were killed, making a total of 2700 killed by the Islamists in the year 2000. Source CI.No.531] in the name of Islam, has led many, when asked what the difference, in their view, was between Islam and Christianity, to declare: "Christianity is life, Islam is death." For Samia, a secondary school pupil, the proof of the difference between Islam and Christianity was the mixing and relationship between the sexes, the former forbidding it, and the latter allowing it. One church alone recorded 50 baptisms a year; and this in a country where a woman wearing lipstick could result in an entire family, elderly women and children included having their throats cut. Apostasy is punishable by death under Islamic Law. Full article >>> secularislam.org