Posted on 06/25/2002 2:55:09 PM PDT by Stultis
Edited on 04/13/2004 1:39:41 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
"On what grounds?"
On the grounds that nuking the religious focal point of billions of devout folks will not further our purpose of eliminating the urge to commit terrorism one iota...more lifelong enemies of America would be created by such an unjustified act as you could ever hope to eliminate with the blast. Plus, it just ain't Right!!
FReegards...MUD
I'm by no means the President of the Islamic Fan Club just now, either, but how do you simply hate a religion?! Do you agree that such an attitude would be quite damaging were it to infect national policy?
FReegards...MUD
I think you misunderstood.
a.cricket
Nuking Medina makes much more sense, if a nuke is employed.
I find no evidence that Islam is remotely interested in peace.I am not interested in foolishly attempting to deal rationally with an irrational enemy.Islam declared war on the rest of mankind.Why do people avoid that fact?
Bush has said this will be a new kind of war, and he is speaking truth in that.This is not a battle of nations,nor even of religions.Islam is not a religion, it is a barbaric governmental system utilised by a limited number of despotic regimes to controll ignorant populations.
It is a battle of humananity against despicable sociopaths.IMNSHO.
DOHHHH!! LOL...you are absolutely right and I was WRONG!!
Please accept my forgiveness, my FRiend...MUD
IMNSHO, we must work to separate the "barbaric governmental system" from the religion of Islam. Muslims make up what...10%, 15%, 20% of the World population? Are we to write off the whole lot of them because of a bunch of brain-washed radicals bastardizing a religion to justify their indefensible deeds?
"It is a battle of humanity against despicable sociopaths."
Yes it is, and it is a battle we shall win...MUD
That truly depends on them, doesnt it? There are always shrill extremist voices in any loosely grouped set of people who claim a common "label".I see no signs of a "silent majority" in Islam which denounces the stated goal of world domination and the extermination of the rest of humanity.
I also do not believe Islam is a religion. It is a world view which denigrates humanity.I have yet to hear any voice on behalf of Islam which does not attempt to justify the indefensible.Good and Evil exist. No matter your theology, it is time to choose between the two.
OH, OH! But judge not lest ye be judged, isn't it???
/sarcasm.
Medved is as usual right on.
I would like to see a "silent majority" of Muslim-Americans take a higher profile in denouncing the violence by the extremists, but I've seen no credible evidence that "world domination and the extermination of the rest of humanity" is the least bit central to Islamic theology.
"Good and Evil exist. No matter your theology, it is time to choose between the two."
I continue to say that the same choice needs to be made vis a vis the tyrannical Osama bil Clinton, but I agree with you regarding the terrorism as well. Peace-loving Muslims need to come to the fore now...are you with us or aqainst us?! Ante up NOW!! But we still need to leave the door open for those non-terrorist Muslims to join the Human Race while we disintegrate the violent minority which claims to speak for the religion as a whole!!
FReegards...MUD
Volume of postings aside, I take second place to no FReeper in unabashedly exposing, confronting and denouncing the Islamist movement. It metaphysically negates core, essential and universal values of Western liberalism (in the sense of what that term used to mean before it was ceded to the left early in this century) that must never be abandoned or compromised.
But because these are indeed universal values in question, they should be embodied in some effective form in any acceptable human society. I refuse to compromise the universality of these ideas, or weaken their practical potency in transforming any region of the globe, by associating them in any way with xenophobia, nativism or bigotry. Unfortunately many FReepers are apparently incapable of such distinctions.
On a more mundane level I am very worried that we are in some ways strengthening Western Islamists by tacitly affirming their campaign to (falsely) portray themselves as representative Muslim spokespeople or leaders. This lie -- that CAIR, AMC and other elements of the Wahhabi Lobby broadly represent Western Muslims -- should be exposed as energetically as the rest of their deceptions. Instead many FReepers, even most FReepers, enthusiastically endorse it.
The media is also at fault here (broadcast more so than print). I see an endless stream of wahhabists (and various fellow travelers) on my television screen every night, uncontestedly ceded the role of Arab or Muslim "representatives," but I virtually never see or even hear of a Khaled El Fadl, or a Khalid Duran (who wrote this article with Daniel Pipes, and assisted Steve Emerson with research for American Jihad), or a Tashbih Sayyed (whose California based Pakistan Today uses the term "homicide bomber," and refers in a news piece to last Tuesday's bus bombing in Jerusalem as "An Act Of Evil Beyond Words"). There are large numbers of genuinely moderate, or otherwise anti-Islamist, Muslims in this country and elsewhere in the West (secularists; modernists; pious traditionalists; Kurds, Sufis and scores of other sects frequently oppressed by Islamists; etc) who are being dangerously ignored by conservatives and by the popular media. Here is a quote from the Pipes/Duran article:
Western institutions and governments should support Muslim moderates. By moderates, we mean individuals and organizations unambiguously committed to democracy, pluralism, and secularism. They explore alternatives to the rigid ritualism of legalist orthodoxy, emphasize ecumenism (fraternal relations with Christians and Jews) and equality of the sexes. Some are religiously committed, others are not. They come disproportionately from minority (e.g., Berber, Kurd, Alevi) Muslim populations.Moderates have strengths in Muslim communities. Turkish teachers in German schools, for example, tend toward staunch secularism; the court decision to ban swimming for Turkish girls upset them considerably. Similarly, professionals prefer a modern-oriented version of Islam.
A strong lobby against the chador and other manifestations of Islamism exist, especially Germany, also in France. It consists of educated first- and second-generation Turkish women who use their influence to curb Islamist activities and to guarantee the freedom of Muslim women.
Moderates have intellectual firepower, for many of their most original thinkers have fled their repressive homelands and taken up residence in the West. In Europe and America, Muslim intellectuals work without the political oppression that reigns in so many Muslim countries; political stability, religious tolerance, cultural pluralism, and freedom of expression permit them to break new ground for the entire world of Islam. The Muslim debate over changing values is discussed more honestly and profoundly in the United States and Western Europe than anywhere else, certainly far more so than in Iran or Sudan. As a result, Kanan Makiya observes, "Europe has replaced Beirut as a haven for quality books in Arabic and on the Middle East."
A galaxy of outstanding Muslim scholars have found at Western universities the opportunity to research and teach denied them at home. Prominent names include Pakistanis Fazlur Rahman in Chicago and Ishtiyaq Ahmed in Stockholm, Algerians Mohamed Arkoun (Paris) and Ali Merad (Lyon), Egyptians Fathi Osman (Los Angeles) and Zaki Badawi (London), the Sudanese Abdallahi Ahmed An-Na'im (Washington), the Yugoslav Smail Balic (Vienna), and the Iranian Sayyid Hossein Nasr (Washington). Some Sufi spiritual masters and their disciples, including the Moroccans Khalid Bentounes (Belgium and France) and Jabrane Sebnat (Sweden and Germany), are decidedly modernist.
The Western public and its media must not lump Islamists and moderate Muslims together. In particular, they need to understand that Islamists constitute a minority of the Muslim populations in their midst. Not to recognize this undermines all those opposed to the Middle Eastern regimes. Although many Iranians fled Iran precisely to get away from the mullahs, Americans wrongly assume that the Iranians living in their midst are associated with the Khomeini regime.
To penalize all Muslims for the antics of a few extremists is deeply unfair. Indeed, this is a form of double jeopardy, whereby the moderates suffer from the outside world which sees them as extremists and the fundamentalists who see them as sell-outs. The powers in the Islamic world spurn them; the West perceives them as just another brand of Islamists; and Islamists attack them relentlessly, calling them Communists and Free Masons. (Their problem recalls the predicament of law-abiding blacks in the United States, punished once by whites, who see them as criminally-inclined, and a second time by black criminals, who prey especially on them.)
Let us fight evil where ever we find it, but let us defend good where ever we find it as well.
Actually, in all honesty, I believe it deserves serious consideration. I am not being facetious or flippant. Violence is the only thing the 90% of Islamists who approve of 911 understand. Did you catch that? NINETY PERCENT of Muslims approve of the September 11th atrocity against America. I know some of them personally who have been here for years and are ostensibly American citizens who approve.
Where do you think the $$$BILLIONS$$$ of dollars the terrorists are getting comes from? Saudi Arabia, of course. Nobody else has billions to give them. Most of the 911 bombers were Saudi expatriates. The Saudis are funding the terrorists and pretending as if they are SHOCKED! SHOCKED I SAY! when their guys blow us up.
Yes, I honestly believe we should say to Saudi Arabia "The next time one of your boys kills thousands of Americans, you can kiss your holy shrine goodbye."
And what happens to Islam when Mecca is gone? If Mohammed is so powerful, why couldn't he protect Mecca? It would demonstrate once and for all that Mohammed is nothing more than a dead pedophile who created a deviant religion honoring himself.
The other reason is that there are over a billion Muslims overseas, and overseas ticket sales make up a LOT of the profit margins of American films. Even in Europe, there are a lot of Muslims, and they can cause trouble at the theaters if they have an excuse
I dislike all religion pretty intensely. The very concept of religion is anathema to me. I mean, think about it. In any other context, we consider people to be mentally ill if they believe in irrational things and talk to people who aren't there. Why do we think someone is crazy if they say the CIA listens to everything they say, but consider them quite normal if they think a big ghost in the sky listens to everything they say? We think they are nuts if they believe in Atlantis but not if they believe in heaven.
So to start with, I think anyone who believes in any religion is mentally ill. I am aware that this view does not endear me to the folks here at FR so I don't say it too often, but there you have it.
I should qualify that by saying that mental illness can vary in extremity. Anorexia is a mental illness, but people can and do function more or less even though they have it. Ditto with gambling. So yes, I believe 95% of the world is in the grip, to varying degrees, of mental delusion.
But Islam is the worst of a bad lot. Really, I don't see how anyone with a functioning brain can read chapters 5 and 9 of the Koran and not come to the same conclusion.
Do you agree that such an attitude would be quite damaging were it to infect national policy?
That would depend on how it was presented. No one as blunt as I am should get anywhere near a microphone, obviously. Besides, the people most likely to have the internal assurance to fight Muslims are going to be Christian. Most atheists, unlike myself, are really secular humanists and/or communists, and either don't have the confidence to say "this is a bad religion" or are secretly hoping that Muslims will undermine Judeo-Christian capitalism enough so that when it falls, they can influence the outcome.
So my best bet would be to whip up the Christians against the Muslims... except I'm just not good at playing people that way. I'd rather everyone simply wake up one day and realize it's all a delusion, but I'm not holding my breath.
NOBODY is madder OR more hurt than my much-beloved adopted daughter, who is from Turkey and a Moslem!
she cried for days afterwards and spent a great deal of time on her knees praying for our victims of the "blasphemers of our Islamic faith".
for dixie,sw
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