Debate?

[conlor]

This is a very brave woman.



http://switch5.castup.net/frames/20041020_MemriTV_Popup/video_480x360.asp?ai=214&ar=1050wmv&ak=null

[RAMESES the Great]

According to a good friend of mine, "She's truly a remarkable woman who we met last year. She's now in hiding and can't practice because of all the death threats against her & her family."

This is understandable and deplorable. I hope she finds a safe sanctuary because she is a excellent example of a brave intellectual female muslim that opposes the fanatical fringe of the faith.

[Snowden]

Originally Posted by RAMESES the Great

According to a good friend of mine, "She's truly a remarkable woman who we met last year. She's now in hiding and can't practice because of all the death threats against her & her family."

This is understandable and deplorable. I hope she finds a safe sanctuary because she is a excellent example of a brave intellectual female muslim that opposes the fanatical fringe of the faith.

It's understandable here, Rameses, because we know something of the natue of Islam. For those who consider it a religion of "love and peace," it would be most opaque. They wouldn't understand it at all.

You realize that you understand Islam better than about 98% of the Muslims?

[Woodmonkey]

Originally Posted by RAMESES the Great

According to a good friend of mine, "She's truly a remarkable woman who we met last year. She's now in hiding and can't practice because of all the death threats against her & her family."

This is understandable and deplorable. I hope she finds a safe sanctuary because she is a excellent example of a brave intellectual female muslim that opposes the fanatical fringe of the faith.

I hope she does too. She is a courageous woman to speak out against the extremely violent fringe of her religion.

[RAMESES the Great]

Originally Posted by Snowden

It's understandable here, Rameses, because we know something of the natue of Islam. For those who consider it a religion of "love and peace," it would be most opaque. They wouldn't understand it at all.

You realize that you understand Islam better than about 98% of the Muslims?

We have a very different perspective on Islam. I do consider it a beautiful attempt to curb mankind's barbarism, as I do most religions. The more hateful tenates of the religion were a product of the wars that had to be fought to establish it and properly belong to that terrible age of its expansion and the Christian "Crusades" that opposed it. Unfortunately, those same tenates, that should have been discarded, are being used now by too many muslims as "laws" about how they should treat "infidels" (all non-muslims).

There truely is much that is beautful in the Islamic culture that is a direct product of the teachings of Islam and I know, respect and like many Americans who are faithful muslims. The religion should not be condemned because a fanatical fascist few use it to war on us.

For a long time I have wondered and debated with my Islamic friends why the leaders of Islam, in America and abroad, do not debate or condemn the radical leaders of the faith. I now think the answer is precisely tied to this woman's plight. It is the same as I imagine a Jew's plight in 1935 Nazi Germany, to speak out against them is to insure a beating (or worse) from Hitler's Brown Shirts (the Nazi party's storm troopers). To speak out, publically, against those I call fascists, is felt by too many muslims to be disrepectful and vaguely unpatriotic to the Islamic culture - just as speaking out against the Brown shirts was felt by the majority of 1930's Germans, to be the same.

The World, or the Western World, must try to convince the Islamic World, that those ancient warlike tenants must be laid to rest, like the Old Testimate "Laws" regarding food, as something no longer relevant. That, as the lady says, Civilizations do not clash they compete. They do this properly by persuasion and logic and economics and diplomacy. This is a lesson, a harsh lesson, that all muslims need to learn, and I think we are teaching it to them, slowly, painfully, as all change is painful. I hope the Western World has the strength and resolve to do it.

[Snowden]

I wish my somewhat intensive study of this ideology had indicated to me what you find in Islam, Rameses. However, I do not see that at all. Not that there are no Muslims who are loving, kind and honest. I do know many like that - but they are still not speaking up against the terrorism we have all about us, from fear and deep knowledge that the fanatics are following orders that, while old, are still a vital teaching of that ideology.

I'm sorry, Rameses - I simply cannot agree with you about this. It would be wonderful if Islam were the religion of peace they say it is. It is not.

As for the Old Testament laws regarding sacrifice or killing all the enemy as in that book, there are absolutely no Jews today who would practice those things. There is no thread in Judaism that calls for that or that would be taken up by the people of that faith or of Christianity today.

The old writings in the Qur'an are superseded by the newer writings, which are the ones calling for violence/death to the "infidels," those who are not Muslim. For atheists, the only sentence is death; for those who do not convert, their sentence is also death. For those who speak out against Islam, there is the fatwa - this is a death sentence.

Islam is a religion of death and destruction, not of peace, love and life.

You mention the Crusades as an indictment against Christianity, but if you mean it this way, perhaps you are overlooking the fact that the Muslims had gone into that land and captured it from the Jews and Christians. The Cursades were fought by ignorant people - and lost because they were a mob, not an army. But the intention was to free the Holy Land from the terrible rule of Islam. An army would have made much better sense and would probably have left alive those people they went in to free. As it was, they slaughtered those people first.