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.

Politics : America Under Siege: The End of Innocence -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: zonder who wrote (19778)	11/12/2002 6:36:42 AM
From: Richnorth	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 27666

In Christian Europe during the Renaissance, a Reformation was led by Martin Luther. There was bloodshed and tears for a hundred years or so. After that, the various Christian factions have been at peace with one another! I am tempted to say that Islam needs a major reformation like the one Christians experienced in Europe in the 1500s and 1600s. But then I realize Islam already has several sects, the Sunnis which constitute the majority, the Shi'ites and the extremist Wahhabis and several smaller groups like the Sufis etc. It seems to me the moderate Muslims will have to, somehow and sooner rather than later, overcome the extremists among them. To be sure, this is no easy task. For this they will have to have some charismatic leaders. To me, all forms of organized religion are suspect in that they seek to control the minds of the faithful. In ancient Egypt, the priesthood was revered as demi-gods because they could predict the exact times of the flooding of the Nile and cause temple gates to open, seemingly of their own accord. Their ability to do all this was due to nothing more than their knowledge of some scientific principles (the rise and fall of the Dog-Star Sirius and expansion due to heat by fire) they jealously guarded from the uninitiated. In early times, Catholicism instilled a lot of fear in its adherents by the threat of excommunication and eternal damnation by hell-fire. Today, a lot of Christians look at Heaven and Hell as states of mind rather than as specific places. Unless Islam undergoes radical changes for the better, I suppose it will ever remain a plague (and scourge???) on mankind????

To: zonder who wrote (19778)	11/12/2002 1:42:08 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 27666

>>Unfortunately Islam has more of them [extremists], and they are killing people much more energetically. You know better than that. It is all too easy to classify all Muslims around the world as some sort of pyromaniac cavemen with a psychotic twist and an aversion to skyscrapers, but this is just not true. Zonder, I never said all Muslims were extremists. I said that Islam has more extremists, doing more killing, than any other religion. This is a statement of fact. I'm sure you must have seen the list that circulated around the Net recently, of 31 current "hot" conflicts, which noted that 28 of those conflicts have Muslims on one side or both. Jihadists have worked their way into most of these conflicts, whether it was their war from the start (Al Qaeda/US, Algeria, Abu Sayyef in the Phillipines), a nationalist struggle that they gladly "lent a hand to" (Israel/Pal, Chechnya), or a where they are being used as a deniable tool of statecraft by a government (Kashmir, also Israel/Pal). The rise of Islamic fundamentalism over the past decade or so is due at large to the conditions Muslims around the world are living in - they are deliberately kept undereducated and in line through religion so they will not rise against their autocratic regimes. Besides, they see other Muslims around the world living in similar conditions of oppression. Unfortunately, the total aggregate of these conditions plays too well into the hands of religious fundamentalists. This is a vast oversimplification. Most of the governments that have tried to keep the population "in line" with religion have achieved an anti-Islamist population, as in Iran. What is happening in most of the Arab world is different; all political dissent is being channeled through the mosque where it takes on Islamist coloring and is pointed at the US and Israel. The governments acquiesce in an uneasy coexistence. Egypt, for instance, certainly does not support the Islamists, and has cracked down on them brutally more than once. You have also omitted the great influence of Saudi-funded propaganda. Wahabbi/Salafi madrassahs all over the ummah are turning out little brainwashed jihadists, in places like Indonesia whose Islamic traditions have been easy-going until now, and whose government is not particularly oppressive. But if the only free school is the madrassah, poor parents will send their boys there. In such schools, the boys will indeed be taught to see their co-religionists living "in similar conditions of oppression", whether they exist or not. As for what Islam, should do, it should have an Enlightenment, as Europe did in the eighteenth century, and join the modern world. David Warren has some good thoughts on the subject: davidwarrenonline.com