One would only hope a Martian would have attended a UN conference on religious tolerance hosted by Saudi Arabia.
Posted on 11/18/2008 3:17:08 AM PST by Clive
If a Martian had attended last week's UN conference on religious tolerance hosted by Saudi Arabia, one of the world's most oppressive states, he would have been a very puzzled alien.
On the one hand, he would have seen Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah promoting tolerance. On the other, if our visiting Martian had taken the time to land his space ship in Saudi Arabia, he would have experienced something quite different.
Let's say that after settling into his hotel in Riyadh, Marvin went to the nearest public park wearing his best religious regalia, set up his portable shrine, prayed and thanked the Martian gods for his safe arrival on Earth.
In the blink of an alien's inscrutable eye, poor Marvin would have found out that -- extraterrestrial or not -- he's still an infidel.
Perhaps Saudi officials would have just confiscated his precious religious possessions, bundled him into his spaceship and sent him on his way.
Or they might have jailed him and given him a whipping for having the audacity to publicly practise a non-Muslim religion before deporting him back to Mars.
The authorities might even have considered the incident serious enough to rewrite Saudi Arabia's hate-filled school books to warn students about the dangers of infidel aliens.
LESSONS LEARNED
Already, Saudi children are taught that Jews are "apes" and Christians are "swine." Shiites and other Muslim minorities who don't follow the state's puritanical Wahhabi doctrine are "unbelievers." So are atheists and Hindus.
Marvin the Martian wouldn't have a chance in Saudi Arabia.
Students are taught not only to hate "unbelievers" but that it is a religious obligation to battle (in the worst sense of the word) infidels to spread the Wahhabi interpretation of Islam.
That's the Islam of tyranny, misogyny and beheadings.
According to Freedom House, Saudi Arabia has spent $75 billion over the last 25 years planting the seeds of hate in Saudi-funded Wahhabi Muslim schools around the world. Saudi Arabia was also included in Freedom House's 2008 report on the world's most repressive societies.
People can be forgiven if they're a tad skeptical, therefore, that the Saudi king is genuinely committed to religious tolerance.
Even a Saudi school kid can see the monarch's wearing no clothes, so to speak. But Saudi citizens wouldn't dare point out the hypocrisy. Instead, critics safely ensconced abroad state the obvious.
"Saudi Arabia is not qualified to be a leader in this (interfaith) dialogue," the director of the U.S.-based Institute for Gulf Affairs, told the Washington Post last week. "It is the world headquarters of religious oppression and xenophobia," added Ali Al-Ahmed.
Saudi Arabia, home to Mecca and Medina, the two holiest sites in Islam, propagates hatred and discrimination both domestically and abroad. Imagine the Vatican teaching "good" Catholics everywhere that all non-believers are subhuman.
This bizarre situation is all that can be expected, I suppose, when less than half of UN member countries are democracies.
Let's face it. A band of tyrants predominates at the UN, resulting in decisions that mirror a theatre of the absurd.
Tiny Israel, a dynamo of democracy and pluralism, was the butt of the most UN-initiated human rights criticism of any country in 2007. Saudi Arabia was way down the list. Yes, Marvin the Martian would be astounded.
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Saudi Arabia - Conversion by a Muslim to another religion is punishable by death. Bibles are illegal. Churches are illegal. Easter celebrations are illegal. It is punishable by death for a non-mulsim to enter the “holy” muslim cities of Medina and Mecca.
In our own declaration of independence, we declared all men to be created equal, yet we held slaves at the time. Americans held themselves up to a high ideal, and we have always been forced to choose between living up to our ideals and being hypocrites. Usually, although it takes time, the ideals win.
Jews were prohibited from entering the country a couple of years ago. Explicitly stated travel ban.
Doesn’t Islamic law discriminate between muslim and kufir with fewer rights and protections under the law for non-muslims?
One would only hope a Martian would have attended a UN conference on religious tolerance hosted by Saudi Arabia.
Just one thought for you and your warped sense of logic. $75 Billion over the last 25 years in addition to being a huge amount of money to fill the heads of their population and worldwide that Jews and Christians are apes and swine, 25 years ago was 1983, the year of the bombing of the Marine Corps barracks in Lebanon.
The way I view this is first, there was 9/11. Then, was Bush's response to that. If he had not been strong and resolute in fighting terrorism, the terrorists would have won over the muslim world. But he was strong, and kept up the fight until we won. Now they need a new way forward. This is now a response to the response, Bush's "peaceful religion of Islam" in the making. For the islamic world, they will modernize and accept a multicultural world, just as we do, in exchange for security from war and terror. For us, we can achieve more security from terrorism. For the Vatican, it wants religious freedom in the muslim world.
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Catholics and Muslims Pledge to Improve Links
Bush, other leaders to promote interfaith dialogue at UN
Vatican-Saudi talks on churches Pope, King Abdullah Meet at Vatican
There's no step and no direction. Just a bunch of UN parasites getting together for a banquet and some photo ops at taxpayer's expense. Even though they were in a world centre of religious intolerance, not one of them dared raise a voice against it. Impressed by your naivete, Byron
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