Town to Behead People Who Don't Pray 5 Times a Day

[skippy3481]

Zig you dont have to like each other but you can't hate each other, because you wind up just looking for an excuse to raise some hell. It can start with the smallest flare up and next thing you know f-15's are dropping 2000 pound bombs on palestine.

[Danzig]

Originally Posted by skippy3481

Zig you dont have to like each other but you can't hate each other, because you wind up just looking for an excuse to raise some hell. It can start with the smallest flare up and next thing you know f-15's are dropping 2000 pound bombs on palestine.

tell me about it. if people get all uppity here about a horse or a football team, i can imagine how things can get crazy in a situation like what they've got, with a tradition of hatred and violence. and it's passed along from one generation to the next.

[skippy3481]

Thats the thing underlying hatred that has been around for 2000+ years is hard to get rid off .

[GenuineRisk]

Originally Posted by Rupert Pupkin

Let's just pretend that tomorrow we gave in to Bin Laden. We said, "Osama, we don't want to fight with you any more. We don't want any more terrorist attacks, so just tell us what you want us to do and we will do it."

He'd probably tell us to get out of Saudi Arabia and probably tell us to get out of the Middle East entirely. He'd tell us to stop supporting Israel. So let's just say that we did everything that he wanted. Do you think that he would retire from being a terrorist? I don't think so. He'd probably leave us alone for now and he would find another target. He'd probably try to overthrow the Saudi government. He'd be blowing things up all over the place in Saudi Arabia. He'd probably try to do the same thing in Egypt. Let's say that he was successful and he overthrew those governments. Do you think he would stop there? I don't think there is any chance that he would stop there. Even if he conqured the entire Middle East, I don't think he would stop there. He'd find someone else to wage jihad on. The West would probably be his next target.

Anyway, none of that is going to happen. But the point is that a terrorist like Bin Laden is going to keep being a terrorist. He will always have a new target to go after. And if you are his target, you need to do what he says or else he will terrorize you.

Bin Laden is an individual citizen with a group of followers. He is not a country. His group carries out bombings in all different countries. He has no right to try to impose his will through violence on all different countries. If I got a group of a few thousand followers, I would have no right to start bombing targets here or any other country.

I think it is a mistake to want to blame the victims in any way. I am not saying that it is not important to figure out why the terrorists are mad at us. It is important to know why they are attacking us. But just because they have what they believe is a reason to attack us, it doesn't mean that the attack is justified in any way.

Rupert, I agree that there are people who thrive on causing death and destruction, and the "cause" is usually just an excuse (anti-abortionists who murder doctors come to mind. If it wasn't abortion it'd be something else for those terrorists), but when a person like that accumulates numerous followers I think we owe it to the safety of our own people to figure out how he's selling his poison to his followers and how we can defuse the situation so he doesn't have such a hold over his people. Because I just don't believe that many people in the world are simply crazy lunatics. It doesn't mean giving in to any demands just to appease (I find it absolutely absurd that so many neo-cons seem to equate "figure out where they're coming from" with "appeasement." Oy. They're the same people who yell that we went into Iraq to bring freedom to people who would be attacked for questioning the regime in power and then threaten violence on their fellow Americans who try to exercise that freedom by questioning their government. I don't think those Americans think much about motes and planks, no matter how Christian they claim to be).

In any event, after all my stupid jibber-jabber, along comes Nicholas Kristof with a really good editorial about Islam across the world, that says what I was trying to say far better (and more briefly!)-- here's the link. If it does't work, let me know and I'll paste the thing. Honestly, I think you'll probably agree with it...

http://select.nytimes.com/2006/12/10...10kristof.html

I was rereading "A History of England" today and reading about the English government's brutal persecution of Catholics and Presbyterians in the 17th Century makes me very grateful we've come so far in the West. I hope the Middle East gets the chance to catch up.

[timmgirvan]

Sorry GR..they wanted my first child in order to read the piece!

[GenuineRisk]

Originally Posted by timmgirvan

Sorry GR..they wanted my first child in order to read the piece!

Darn it; I was afraid of that. I'll cut and paste. Ssshhh....

The Muslim Stereotype
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN, Brunei

Whatever happens in Iraq, we may be inching closer to a “clash of civilizations” between Islam and the West.

There’s a fatigue in the West with an Arab world that sometimes seems to put its creative juices mostly into building better bombs. Even open-minded people in the West sometimes feel a sense of resignation that maybe the bigots are right: maybe Islam just is intrinsically backward, misogynistic and violent.

After I wrote recently about reform elements in Islam, I received a long note from a 24-year-old Chicagoan, Paul Williams, who ventured what many people feel: “I went to school in Macalester College and the whole time there I wrote paper after paper defending Islam,” he told me. Now, he says, after reading the Koran cover to cover and living in Turkey, he has lapsed into political incorrectness: “The more I’m here the more I’m beginning to think that there’s just something wrong with Islam.”

That’s a common view, shaped partly by the way we in the news business focus on violence in the Islamic world. So let me step up and say that I find the common American stereotypes of Islam profoundly warped.

Those stereotypes are largely derived from the less than 20 percent of Muslims who are Arabs, with Persians and Pashtuns thrown in as well. But the great majority of the world’s Muslims live not in the Middle East but here in Asia, where religion has mostly been milder.

At the moment I’m in Brunei, a Muslim country nestled in Southeast Asia. At the University of Brunei, women outnumber men. Women here drive, fill senior offices in government and the private sector, serve as ambassadors and are pilots for the national airline. “Young women have equal opportunities now — it’s up to your capability,” said Lisa Ibrahim, president of the Young Entrepreneurs Association of Brunei.

Brunei has gold-domed mosques in its skyline, and the sultan has two wives. But Brunei is also home to churches and Hindu temples serving a multiethnic society. Young people flirt together in the cafes, and non-Muslims are allowed to drink alcohol.

Anwar Ibrahim, the former Malaysian deputy prime minister, says he reminds Americans that the most populous Muslim country (Indonesia) is a democracy whose elections run more smoothly than Florida’s.

Yes, Islamists are a threat in Asia, and many imams are more scandalized by female flesh than by honor killings or illiteracy. Indonesia has tried the editor of the local edition of Playboy magazine, and a state in Malaysia has threatened to fine women who wear miniskirts. But Indonesia has had a woman as president, while Bangladesh has had two female prime ministers and has more girls in high school than boys.

“We tend to be more tolerant,” Yusof Halim, a prominent lawyer in Brunei, said of Asian Muslims. He then confided: “My honest opinion is that Arabs are male chauvinists.”

Meanwhile, many Muslims are as disenchanted with us as we are with them. They complain about hypocritical Americans who parrot slogans about human rights but brutalize Muslims at Guantánamo and supply the weaponry that kills Muslim children in Gaza and Lebanon.

The Koran and Bible alike have passages that make 21st-century readers flinch; most Christians just ignore sections on slavery or admonitions to kill a disobedient child. Likewise, some Muslims are reinterpreting Koranic passages on polygamy and amputations, saying they were restricted to particular circumstances that no longer apply.

Frankly, I don’t see that any religion’s influence is intrinsically peaceful or violent. Christianity inspired both Mother Teresa and pogroms. Hinduism nurtured Gandhi and also the pioneers of suicide bombings.

These days, ferocious anti-Semitism thrives in some Muslim countries, but in the Dreyfus affair a century ago Muslims sided with a Jew persecuted by anti-Semitic Christians. And the biggest sectarian slaughter in Europe in modern times involved Christians massacring Muslims at Srebrenica.

The plain fact is that some Muslim societies do have a real problem with violence, with the subjugation of women, with tolerance. But the mosaic of Islam is vast and contains many more hopeful glimpses of the future.

There is a historic dichotomy between desert Islam — the austere fundamentalism of countries like Saudi Arabia — and riverine or coastal Islam, more outward-looking, flexible and tolerant. Desert Muslims grab the headlines, but my bet is that in the struggle for the soul of Islam, maritime Muslims have the edge.