# Racial profiling



## Rhisiart (Aug 14, 2006)

British police, together with the CIA, and more importantly Pakistani Intelligence, have allegedly discovered a plot to blow up 12 US aircraft leaving Britain for the US, with a potential loss of life of 3,000 people.

The previous Head of the London Metropolitan Police says that international airports should concentrate on profiling potential terrorists, rather than imposing excessive screening on all flight passengers.

Some say this will lead to racist discrimination, as most Brits recognise that this _de facto _implies that young Muslim men should undergo extra scrutiny as opposed to white men.

Should young Muslim men accept this discrimination, given that their brethren are at Holy War with the infidels in the West, or should they complain that their rights are being denied?


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## Qion (Aug 14, 2006)

I don't see how it's discrimination if that method of categorizing potential mortal threats works. I can't stop myself from being byast, but when I picture myself in their shoes, I believe I would just accept the fact that some people  it up for the rest of us. This topic has been discussed so many times... I've just come to the conclusion that a line needs to be drawn between "fairness" and "logic".


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## adambyte (Aug 14, 2006)

I have to admit, it first glance, it seems like a good idea.... if... only "dark" people bomb stuff, then, let's concentrate at looking at dark people, eh? Saves time, right? And although it may make snese at first.... I can only help but think that eventually the "dark" people will just find the whitey-mc-bombers, and put pressure on THEM to do the dirty work...

So... it may work for in the short-term, but... in the end, it might not matter.

Well, it's just a hypothesis. I could be completely wrong. Who knows?


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## Cat (Aug 15, 2006)

You reap what you sow. If you treat them like criminals, they will become criminals. Mistrusted, shunned, oppressed, what alternative do you give them? The quality of a free democracy is measured by the way it treats its minorities, otherwise it is just a tyranny of the majority. Racial/religious profiling = racism. It will not "lead" to it, it alraedy is officially sanctioned apartheid. They are different, they are dangerous. Free democracies are inherently vulnerable: accept it or become totalitarian. There is no way to avoid some level of terrorism or criminality, not even by becoming a police state. We should rather embrace and extend, not just with mere words, but with goods and deeds, not as colonies, but as friends. What is so difficult about that? Each billion Euros, Dollars or Pounds spent on security could have gone to social programs, education, help for the poor and desperate, not just at home, but worldwide: this would save more lives, again at home and worldwide, than bolstering police and military. A bullet is an expense, a loaf of bread or a book an investment. What hope, what help have we brought to Afghanistan, to Iraq, to Lebanon? More people have died on both sides as effect of the war than have died before as cause of the war. At both sides instincts take precedence over reason and we strike out in anger at each other. Then we hold all responsible for the actions of single individuals, like a vengeful god persecuting the guilty across generations. Racial profiling is assuming guilt instead of assuming innocence. That is where democracy ends. When we are not anymore all equal before the law, we do not have a free country aymore, we have civil war fought with policies, laws, oppression, segregation and deportation. Will there be a final solution?


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## Qion (Aug 15, 2006)

Cat said:


> You reap what you sow. If you treat them like criminals, they will become criminals. Mistrusted, shunned, oppressed, what alternative do you give them? The quality of a free democracy is measured by the way it treats its minorities, otherwise it is just a tyranny of the majority. Racial/religious profiling = racism. It will not "lead" to it, it alraedy is officially sanctioned apartheid. They are different, they are dangerous. Free democracies are inherently vulnerable: accept it or become totalitarian. There is no way to avoid some level of terrorism or criminality, not even by becoming a police state. We should rather embrace and extend, not just with mere words, but with goods and deeds, not as colonies, but as friends. What is so difficult about that? Each billion Euros, Dollars or Pounds spent on security could have gone to social programs, education, help for the poor and desperate, not just at home, but worldwide: this would save more lives, again at home and worldwide, than bolstering police and military. A bullet is an expense, a loaf of bread or a book an investment. What hope, what help have we brought to Afghanistan, to Iraq, to Lebanon? More people have died on both sides as effect of the war than have died before as cause of the war. At both sides instincts take precedence over reason and we strike out in anger at each other. Then we hold all responsible for the actions of single individuals, like a vengeful god persecuting the guilty across generations. Racial profiling is assuming guilt instead of assuming innocence. That is where democracy ends. When we are not anymore all equal before the law, we do not have a free country aymore, we have civil war fought with policies, laws, oppression, segregation and deportation. Will there be a final solution?



I agree to some point that as racial profiling or religious profiling proliferates, so will racism. However, I still go back on my point that if a group or country is acting in a way that is causing mortal injuries to other countries or groups, people from that country should be more susceptible to being questioned. Yea, I know that sounds like I'm extrapolating the acts of individuals to a national level, but for this particular situation it's not so unruly. People of a certain group are undeniably acting in a way that is threatening to certain other groups. Treat them like criminals, and they'll become criminals? I guess, but don't we all go through random searches at airports anymore? My girlfriend was born in LA, she looks Mexican as do some of her aquaintences, and they could just as easily be sent down to the police station for looking Mexican as a dark-skinned person from the Middle East could be checked at an airport. Some of these things we just have to own up to and deal with as far as I'm concerned.


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## fryke (Aug 15, 2006)

Is this really a honest question? (Replying to the first post...) Of course you have to screen everyone the same way. I don't understand how people start to throw every inch of their humanity over board only because "the other side" does. I thought this was taught in kindergarden.


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## adambyte (Aug 15, 2006)

Hate breeds more hate. Cat, as wonderful and idealistic as your ideas are, I'm afraid that many many people are too selfish to even BEGIN to address them.


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## Qion (Aug 16, 2006)

adambyte said:


> Hate breeds more hate. Cat, as wonderful and idealistic as your ideas are, I'm afraid that many many people are too selfish to even BEGIN to address them.



I refrained from calling them idealistic, but I agree with you. How something should be is usually not how it is or could be. Government, politics, and people have been f**ked up for milleniums.


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## bluedevils (Aug 16, 2006)

and how many of you are on the recieving end of racial profiling?  I was just talking to a co-worker of mine yesterday.  He rolls down all his windows and puts his hands out the window when apporaching police road blocks.  It is sad that this type of stuff happens.  I don't think it is right, but I can't say I know what the police have to face everyday as well.

To me this type of issue cannot be black or white (no pun intended at all) and must be carefully weighed in the grey.


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## Rhisiart (Aug 16, 2006)

fryke said:


> Is this really a honest question? (Replying to the first post...) Of course you have to screen everyone the same way. I don't understand how people start to throw every inch of their humanity over board only because "the other side" does. I thought this was taught in kindergarten.


Yes, it is an honest question. Racial profiling is apparently what many security experts want (and most likely already practice). They are not suggesting that screening does not apply to everyone, but rather that extra measures may have to be taken for young Muslim men, regardless of their racial ethnicity (i.e. including East-European Muslims). 

Is racial profiling unfair? What if White Supremists were on the rampage, attempting to kill as many non-Christians as they can. What if they planned to bomb airlines, subway trains or fly planes into skyscrapers? As a white male faced with this threat I would quite happily submit myself to whatever extra security checks were necessary, regardless of what country I live in. I wouldn&#8217;t take it personally.

In numerous polls, nearly a quarter of young Muslim males in Britain showed support for the bombing of London, Madrid and 9/11. With figures like these, what on earth are the security forces expected to do? To imply that those responsible for passenger safety have lost their humanity is a lazy argument. Neither you nor I have to make such difficult decisions. In the opinion of those assigned to protect us, pragmatism over-rides cultural and religious sensitivities.

Looking at the wider picture, my own view is that Bush and Blair are as much as part of the problem as some young Muslim males. Islamic radicalism preceded Bush and Blair&#8217;s legacy, but these two deluded idiots have worked damn hard to create exactly the right conditions to allow it to flourish. Perhaps a change of leadership and a radical change of foreign policy in the Middle East might obviate the need for draconian security measures at our airports.


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## Cat (Aug 18, 2006)

It might be idealistic, but things like consitutions, which are at the base of our democracies, are based on ideals. When we stop following them, we become no better than totalitarian oppressive regimes. Of course it is a slippery slope, so we may argue back and forth until it is too late.



> Is racial profiling unfair? What if White Supremists were on the rampage, attempting to kill as many non-Christians as they can. What if they planned to bomb airlines, subway trains or fly planes into skyscrapers? As a white male faced with this threat I would quite happily submit myself to whatever extra security checks were necessary, regardless of what country I live in. I wouldn&#8217;t take it personally.



This reverses the legal situation. You are taking steps to prove your innocence instead of the accusers taking steps to prove your guilt. By officially sanctioning racial profiling as a security policy, we declare a part of the population as unequal to the rest and treat them differently: we criminalise them, we assume guilt instead of innocence. Pro-active, pre-emptive justice is done. Even if there is no crime, we actively go looking for evidence to condemn them. At that point we have already sacrificed our human dignity, so what is left to protect? What are we saving and kepping secure by perverting it? Freedom? Democracy? We are losing them step by step with  very little neeed for terrorists to actually blow up things. If you start fighting back by becoming an undemocratic police state, then you have already lost. Being a democracy means being vulnerable. Accepting to die for you ideals involves accepting the risk of being blown up by extremists rather than taking up arms against them. Already the romans discovered that normal warfare can never best guerrilla tactics. It is a useless waste of values, life and resources. This translates very concretely and pratically into amounts of money spent versus results obtained. I repeat: bullets are an expense, food and education an investment. The war has caused more loss of life and money than all succeful terrorist attacks up to now. Can't you think of a more efficient way of dealing with the situation?


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## Rhisiart (Aug 18, 2006)

Cat, you make a very intelligent and convincing argument here. Yes we ought to show more courage, behave in an ethical manner and thus defy those that wish to terrorise us. As far as thinking of a more effient way of dealing with the situation, I will give that some thought.

I assume the war you refer to is Iraq, which is undoubtedly a total waste of life and resources, all in the name of Bush and Blair's Christian fundamentalist idea of democracy-making.

However, it is difficult to marry the need to hold the sort of convictions that you display (and you are of course right), with the day to day fear that some lunatic somewhere, white, brown or black, wants to kill your children in the belief that God will reward him in Paradise.

Nevertheless, I agree with what you have said in principle, and principles are important if we want to live in a fair and equitable society.

However if I am sitting on a plane with my family next to two agitiated Pakistani young men, I _will _watch them like a hawk. I don't mind dying for the ideals you aspire to, but I would do everything in my power to ensure my kids aren't going to.


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## Qion (Aug 18, 2006)

Cat said:


> This reverses the legal situation. You are taking steps to prove your innocence instead of the accusers taking steps to prove your guilt. By officially sanctioning racial profiling as a security policy, we declare a part of the population as unequal to the rest and treat them differently: we criminalise them, we assume guilt instead of innocence.



You're not really taking any "steps" to prove anything. If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry about. We're not talking about strip-searches and full-body cavity checks, we're talking about running you over with a wand, having a pat-down, and going through your pockets. That seems fairly "human" to me, as it's potentially *saving* the lives that would have been lost.



Cat said:


> Accepting to die for you ideals involves accepting the risk of being blown up by extremists rather than taking up arms against them. Already the romans discovered that normal warfare can never best guerrilla tactics. It is a useless waste of values, life and resources. This translates very concretely and pratically into amounts of money spent versus results obtained. I repeat: bullets are an expense, food and education an investment. The war has caused more loss of life and money than all succeful terrorist attacks up to now. Can't you think of a more efficient way of dealing with the situation?



Sure, you just said it. _Die_. Die for our ideals, die for the very thing which you purport is saving us. Maybe in the long run Cat, but we're talking about profiling right now.

Like rhsiart said, I think you have a good argument. I guess the reason I'm arguing is because it's a bit off-topic. I would love to be able to lean back on philosophy and live idealistically all the time, but that doesn't mean I won't protect my family from a lunatic with an AK and the idea that killing me will send them to heaven. That's just not my type of thing to die for.


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## billbaloney (Aug 18, 2006)

Qion said:


> You're not really taking any "steps" to prove anything. If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry about. We're not talking about strip-searches and full-body cavity checks, we're talking about running you over with a wand, having a pat-down, and going through your pockets. That seems fairly "human" to me, as it's potentially *saving* the lives that would have been lost.



You may want to discuss the concept of the "slippery slope" with Cat, the resident academic philosopher.  Here in the United States we have a seemingly endless number of instances these days of the over-application of what Congress thought it approved, or what "the people" thought they asked for.

The problem, Qion, is you never get what you want.  If you think you want a racially-driven yet mild regime of extra inspection for the dark-skinned among us, what you really get is a racially-charged situation where an entire population gets painted with the brush of suspicion, which inevitably leads to fear, misunderstanding, and hate on both sides.  And that, of course, leads to less security.

For instance: perhaps you'd like to take a walk through a high school in one of the poor neighborhoods in the Bronx, where because the population is overwhelmingly people of color there are guards at each door, metal detectors, and a general feeling of "control the black kids, they're all potentially gangsters".  Perhaps your advice for them is, "Well, most gang members in America are black and in cities; so you should accept this if you really want to help make society safer."

Do you see why that's a bad argument?  It's not because you can't make a logical argument in favor of it; witness the painstakingly constructed essays on the right in the United States in favor of just this kind of racial profiling.  It's because principles themselves have real-world effects, and those effects can undermine other, more important principles.

In America we interned every Japanese citizen during WWII.  The logic was sound: 

1. The Japanese are attacking us.
2. The Japanese could have spies among the U.S. population.
3. These spies are most likely Japanese.
4. If we intern every Japanese person in America, we have most likely interned any possible Japanese spies.

The results undermined more important principles, i.e., our constitutional defenses regarding equal protection, search and seizure, and the inalienable right to liberty.


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## Qion (Aug 18, 2006)

Look, I'm not a moron. I understand fine what Cat has to say. My entire argument was based upon the fact that this is a situational topic, not a world topic. "Should we allow racial profiling in airports in Britain for this particular event?" Hell yes! Where are you coming from, lecturing to me about American history and insinuating that I don't understand the potential outcomes of a racist society? Hello, we're not _talking_ about a worldwide society! We're talking about some bloody airports! Would you really like to get into some ugly, political, nationalistic, racist, byast, religious, humanitarian argument with me? Go ahead... but damn... make sure you understand where somebody is coming from before you go off on a tangent and lecture to them like they've never taken a history course before.


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## billbaloney (Aug 18, 2006)

I'm not making an argument about your intelligence.  I am arguing that you can't ask this question -- "Should we allow racial profiling in airports in Britain for this particular event?" -- in isolation.

To ask the question and demand that it be answered strictly per se is disingenuous, or impossible, or both.  My point about high schools in the Bronx, and Japanese internment, is that they both represent situations where society has tried, and failed, to implement an "isolated" policy of racial profiling.

Perhaps you can suggest, as a student of history, a situation where racial profiling was implemented as part of an isolated policy that had no far-reaching and negative side effects, and that achieved its stated goal.


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## Qion (Aug 18, 2006)

I never said I was a "student of history", thanks. My thing is psychology, but I keep up with events in human history that I find to be interesting or important. 

Anyway, both of your examples to me are not good for an objective comparison with this situation. They both have to deal with a much larger scale of people; the high school example having to do with thousands of blacks in a situation where they are actually the majority, and the Japanese example having to do with thousands of Japanese all living sparsely throughout the whole of the U.S. Knowledgeable, but not exactly meaningful to this situation. A British airport is less general than the entire U.S. or the entire high school population of the Bronx. 

I agree, it's egotistical to assume that racial profiling would absolutely work in this given situation. It's not ill-based to relate this situation to what has worked or not worked in the past. However, it's also egotistical to assume that it wouldn't work, and would cause fear, resentment, and more conflict. That is completely dependent on situation. Both of us have strong arguments for either side, and this will do nothing but proliferate if we keep bickering back and forth.


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## billbaloney (Aug 18, 2006)

I don't know what role egotism plays here...don't understand the choice of words.

I'm not sure that we're "bickering back and forth" either.  I think this point that we're talking about was actually the core of the original question that started this thread.

I'm not _assuming_ that racial profiling, in any quantity, will lead to these effects (fear, resentment, and so on).  I'm _deducing_ from every possible situation that I can think of.  Your "strong argument", however, does seem to be based on assumptions, and not on any historical precedent.

A British airport, in fact, is a very general field of activity for this regime, because Heathrow is one of the busiest airports in the world.  You're suggesting that it's a good idea to establish a racially-based checkpoint regime at one of the busiest airports in the world.  It certainly dwarfs high schools in the Bronx in terms of its scope.


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## Cat (Aug 18, 2006)

I'm not sure about the "scale" argument:

''BAA&#8217;s UK airports handled 15 million passengers in July'' 

6.5 million of which passed through Heathrow.

How is racial profiling different from giving people some recognisable badge to sew on their clothing? 

It is different and worse because the stigma exists in the eye of the beholder and can be wrongfully assigned and not easily removed.

A hypothesis can be falsified by just one case against. A principle can be lost due to just one precedent. If the principle is one that is fundamental to the consitution of your free democracy, the consequences can become very scary.


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## Mikuro (Aug 18, 2006)

Security-&#8226;-&#8226;-&#8226;-&#8226;-&#8226;-&#8226;-&#8226;-&#8226;-&#8226;-&#8226;-&#8226;-&#8226;-&#8226;-&#8226;-Freedom

Pick a spot on the line, because you can't have one without compromising the other. On the far end of "security", you have an evil, totalitarian government in control of everything, and the far end of "freedom" is just anarchy.



			
				Benjamin Franklin said:
			
		

> They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.





			
				Thomas Jefferson said:
			
		

> I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.



I truly believe those quotes (although I realize they have more weight to Americans than Brits). And I'm sick and tired of politicians acting like these are outdated beliefs held by people who don't recognize the threats we face. I live in New York City; we've obviously been hit a lot harder by terrorism than anywhere else in the country, so yeah, I think I appreciate the dangers. And I'm willing to accept them. That's the price of freedom.


I have very strong beliefs on the matter, but it's really all a matter of degress &#8212; again I point to the spots on the line &#8212; so I can certainly respect those who disagree with me....as long as their position is logical and self-consistent. (That means I can't respect most of our leaders, just for the record.)

An example of an idea I simply can't respect is the random (I mean, "random") bag searches currently going on in the NYC subway system. The primary defense its supporters use against the obvious claim that it's unconstitutional and violates human rights is that "it's voluntary; if someone doesn't want to be searched, they're free to leave the subway and come in through another entrance." Greeeaaat. That basically means that the only people who WILL be searched are innocent people who don't have the time/energy/guts to resist. It reduces the chance of a successful search to ZERO, since obviously anyone with a bomb will choose NOT to be searched. (Either that or they'll instantly blow up everyone in the vicinity; I wonder how our brave police officers feel about being assigned suicide missions. Suicide missions with a miniscule chance of success, sure, but...wait, does that make it better or worse?)

So what exactly is the purpose of these searches? I'm left with three logical conclusions: 1) The people behind this plan are breathtakingly stupid, 2) They really do just want to encroach on the freedom of the innocent, or 3) They're pandering to the fearful and uninformed. None of these are respectable.


The same is true of most of these efforts made in the name of security. I wouldn't be so opposed to them as a rule if there were any sign that they actually WORKED. The indiscriminate phone taps, random searches, and racial profiling have all failed to produce results. What HAS produced results? Only the methods that have been legal and accepted for decades: _targetted_ surveillance based on _intelligence_, not shots in the dark.

You'll probably never make me _agree_ with racial profiling. You might, however, make me respect it. But right now I don't.


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## pds (Aug 18, 2006)

Not just in theory, but in practice I have to reject the profiling solution completely.

My daughter flew to London on the 10th (day the plot was uncovered). She had a bit of trouble getting through the airport, but mostly because of the disruption to take-off schedules and a rainstorm at JFK. I just flew from JFK to Cairo and it took me about an extra 10 minutes to get through the formal stuff at the airport (though we went an hour earlier just in case). I can put up with an extra 10 or 20 minutes of checking. (I really don't buy that much liquid stuff at the duty free anyway.)

I would be offended if there were two separate systems - or if my salt-of-the-earth brother-in-law were singled out because his brown skin or oriental origin. I'll put up with the minor inconvenience.

The present state of war is a result of the abandonment of principles in the name of practicality. The fundamentalists are not attacking western freedom, they are protesting (wrongly) against stupid western policies that have upheld oppressive regimes while abandoning (wrongly) their moral obligations to aid and educate. So how can a further abandonment of moral requirements do anything but exacerbate the situation.


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## Rhisiart (Aug 18, 2006)

As I initially posted this thread, I would like to add further comment. My personal views have been modulated to an extent by very sound liberal postings from the likes of Cat, Bill Baloney and Mikuro.

The title of the thread is what security experts use. This of course is entirely inaccurate and meaningless. Perhaps a better term is cultural profiling. A lot more complex, but not based on skin colour.

I have a very serious problem with:
&#8226; Neo Nazis
&#8226; Stalinists
&#8226; The Klu Klux Klan
&#8226; The Black Panthers
&#8226; White and black youths carrying weapons into schools
&#8226; Christian, Jewish or Hindu fundamentalists
&#8226; Hutu militia groups in the 1990's
&#8226; Serbian ultra-nationalists
&#8226; Algerian/British/Pakistani/Indonesian/Egyptian terrorists
&#8226; The IRA and British intelligence (the latter being no better than their Republican counterparts)
&#8226; Bader-Meinhof
&#8226; Basque separatists
&#8226; Lombardian politicians (e.g. Berscolini)
&#8226; Osama Bin Laden, Bush and Blair etc.

What do they all have in common? Arrogance and blind belief - not skin colour.

Perhaps we have to get away from race and focus instead on negative sub-cultures. 

Cultural identities, political beliefs and religious convictions are forces for both good and evil. Maybe focusing on fanatical sub-cultural groups is the way forward (i.e. through intelligence operations as Mikuro suggests), rather than racial profiling, which in essence is a blunt tool.

Having said this, I still don't have to make life and death decisions in our airports. It is easy to pontificate from the comfort of your ergonomically designed computer chair.

I guess Qion and I are just part of the 'Self Preservation Society'.


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## reed (Aug 19, 2006)

rhisiart....

You forgot the Swedish Sauna Liberation Organization. At Midnight.

  Just jumping in here, I think we are trapped by today's events: scare tactics by the Bush/Blair crowd, true terrorists (from everywhere), The Press, Iraq, Lebanon, Israel, "North/South" economics, oil, China, four wheel drives, more Chinese, greedy businessmen, ghettos, immigration, poverty, the Euro/dollar exchange (just kidding), bad television, etc. and most of all....we must CONSUME. In a word, we get what we deserve because we are pigs. The human "race" has not been playing with a full deck for centuries and now we are running out of ice.
  If I'm double checked at an airport because of my looks...tough nuts. This is the crappy situation we have ALL created and that is the way the cookie will crumble from now on. What a world. Helas!!!!! 

  "Goodbye to All That" by Robert Graves seems like a book to re-read.

 Do I sound like a downer? Sorry.


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## Rhisiart (Aug 20, 2006)

reed said:


> rhisiart....
> 
> You forgot the Swedish Sauna Liberation Organization. At Midnight.


Yes, I get your point. It was bit of a pointless list. I over cooked the eggs in my attempt to reassure other contributors that I am not some right-wing WASP lunatic (actually I am White Celtic Non-Conformist Protestant).

P.S. Just how dangerous are the Swedish Sauna Liberation Organization? Are they easy to identify (i.e. to do they wear just towels around their waists?).


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## fryke (Aug 20, 2006)

Mikuro: Keep in mind that you can also have absolutely no security at all and almost no freedom at the same time. It's not _really_ such a linear thing. Seems to me freedom is currently stripped down in the name of a _false_ feeling of security.

Besides: This thread's subject is not about freedom (unless you mean a government's freedom to be racist...).

But the question again: Should we forget _all_ of our high morales just because of "but they did show me the tongue first!"-like points? I think not. Let's live by example and _still_ improve security. You don't have to invent racist ways to screen your passengers. Just screen them and make sure that your passengers are secure. I personally wouldn't want to be on a plane with, say, a hundred passengers of which only 20 have been screened well because of how they look. Not only because of the racism-issue, but also because I don't want to sit next to the pretty white French girl with the bomb. Although at crunch time, it might be the most interesting seat.


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## billbaloney (Aug 20, 2006)

fryke said:


> Although at crunch time, it might be the most interesting seat.



Most likely in several ways.


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## fryke (Aug 20, 2006)

Exactly.


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## Rhisiart (Aug 20, 2006)

fryke said:


> Mikuro: Keep in mind that you can also have absolutely no security at all and almost no freedom at the same time. It's not _really_ such a linear thing. Seems to me freedom is currently stripped down in the name of a _false_ feeling of security.
> 
> Besides: This thread's subject is not about freedom (unless you mean a government's freedom to be racist...).
> 
> But the question again: Should we forget _all_ of our high morales just because of "but they did show me the tongue first!"-like points? I think not. Let's live by example and _still_ improve security. You don't have to invent racist ways to screen your passengers. Just screen them and make sure that your passengers are secure. I personally wouldn't want to be on a plane with, say, a hundred passengers of which only 20 have been screened well because of how they look. Not only because of the racism-issue, but also because I don't want to sit next to the pretty white French girl with the bomb. Although at crunch time, it might be the most interesting seat.


Sorry Fryke, but this reads as an example of armchair philosophy.

Yesterday, a Monarch plane leaving Malaga for Liverpool was prevented from taking off because passengers complained of two suspicious behaving Pakistanis on board. The British press quickly whipped up a storm in a teacup, suggesting that the airline and passengers over-reacted and were being hysterical. 

It now transpires that the two individuals _were_ behaving suspiciously, so much so that the pilots and flight crews were sufficiently concerned to stop the flight from leaving.

What I really take umbrage to is the idea that if you accept that there is a real war taking place (whoever is at fault) that being cautious is being racist. I don&#8217;t give a flying fig whether the threat are White Nazis or Asian Islamist extremists.

Having said this, I do actually agree to a point where you are coming from because you are a decent person. It's just a matter of pragmatism (I think!).


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## fryke (Aug 20, 2006)

"armchair philosophy" alright. I can swallow that without a problem. The problem remains: If people start to allow torture based on the "qualities of the enemy", if racist tendencies are suddenly okay because "we're under pressure now" etc., this'd mean that _any_ of our values crumbles without a problem as soon as there's pressure. So why have values at all? If you only apply them in calm days, in your armchair, to go back to that picture, then those values are armchair values and hollow themselves. And I'd like _not_ to think so.

Where did you read into that I say being cautious is racist? If anything, I'm suggesting to be even _more_ cautious, because the next attack might be carried out by people who don't fit that racial profile.


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## Rhisiart (Aug 20, 2006)

fryke said:


> Where did you read into that I say being cautious is racist?


No Fryke, you never suggested that. I meant it as a broad statement. Mind you, I stick with my armchair philosophy argument. But then, I also see your point of view too. 

I'm so tempted to sit on the fence because your argument is essentially sound. However, I don't think the right thing to do is to hide my head in the sand. My views may be on the wrong side of the tracks, but there it is.


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## fryke (Aug 20, 2006)

Okay. I can live with that. 

(I kinda think this thread gave me a nice idea for a story I'm currently writing. 20 year old French blonde terrorist on the seat next to you in the plane. Sounds great. It has something. Sorry to bring that back again. I'm just mistreating my keyboard and writing quite a bit of text. Hopefully it'll be good when I'm done.)


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## reed (Aug 21, 2006)

rhisiart,

 It was a vey good list. I would have added a few more but I just wanted to lighten-up a bit this very serious situation that we are living. I forgot Global Warming on MY list by the way (is "Global Warming" in the dictionary now?). In a word, these things are connected. Think about it for a sec.
 We will be controlled, filmed, filed and spied upon.A bit like "The Prisoner." Double checks at an airport is peanuts. I'm sure my shoe size is already known by the FBI.

 SSLO...... 

 No, towels are only an option. That's the fun part. This is the only organization I would join.....if they would accept me. Which I doubt. SIGH!!!

 All the best.


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## Rhisiart (Aug 21, 2006)

fryke said:


> Okay. I can live with that.
> 
> (I kinda think this thread gave me a nice idea for a story I'm currently writing. 20 year old French blonde terrorist on the seat next to you in the plane. Sounds great. It has something. Sorry to bring that back again. I'm just mistreating my keyboard and writing quite a bit of text. Hopefully it'll be good when I'm done.)


Not all that far from reality. During the IRA bombing of London in the 1980's, my Irish wife was 'racially' profiled at airports and ports. She had a particularly bad experience getting though immigration at Heathrow one year. However, she seems to have come through it all unscathed.

As your book develops, could you not introduce a dashing muscular built Welshman as a hero who saves the day?

And Reed, I'd like to join the SSLO, but 'Herslf' is worried that there may be too many beautiful, scantily dressed blonde Sewdish women in the ranks.


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## reed (Aug 21, 2006)

I was double checked at Kennedy (that is... coming back to my home town) because I was living in France for two years and working for UNICEF? My French girl friend went flying through without a wink. Firgure that one out. All is "in the eye of the beholder?"

rhisiart

  MY wife wouldn't like it if I join the SSLO either. Hey, she gets through customs/passport control and I get nailed. For my looks? I think she owes me one.


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## rubaiyat (Aug 21, 2006)

It would be foolish in the extreme not to search on the characteristics known to apply to most of the suspects.

If you want to catch Osama Bin Laden, an exceptionally tall Yemeni with long beard, on dialysis, should you apprehend dumpy Japanese housewives to show lack of discrimination?

True not all Muslim terrorists look like Arabs or Pakistanis, but virtually all the terrorists so far have been. Further the moslem community has been half hearted in its condemnation of the terrorist acts.

If you read the Koran you will find out why. It is nothing like the bible or buddhist teachings or that of the bahai or many codes which place kindness and love of your fellow human beings at the heart of religious practice. Many of its precepts are violent, misogynist, intolerant and absolutist. There are calls to charity and good works but these are essentially aimed at fellow muslims.

To muslims who believe in the absolute truth of the Koran, the so called terrorist acts are quite understandable. The terrorists are doing no more nor less than what the Koran calls for. The only point of debate arises over whether the killing of the faithful to get at the infidel is justified. There is no Koranic condemnation against killing of the unfaithful, quite the reverse, there are several incitements to do exactly that.

A muslim would have to ignore several parts of the Koran to maintain a peaceful, tolerant position with infidels. To the credit of many they do do that, but if it came to choosing between adhering to their religion and killing infidels there is no choice and they have shown on many occassions in history that is the case.

The strange part is that underlying the current agressive acts is a pervasive sense of persecution fostered by hard line Islamists and propagated by an abundance of petro-dollars. This follows a similar line to the German Nazi creed that they are justified in attacking mostly innocents because they have allegedly done something to you. 

Islam is a religion founded and advanced mostly by violent conquest. Their thinking goes along the lines of "We are in the right because the Koran says so, so we have done no wrong but anyone who has raised a hand back against us has attacked the Koran". So they cherry pick their history and show no mercy to their "enemies". The death penalty applies to those who renounce Islam so by recategorising sects within Islam as "unbelievers" they can turn on them as well in internecine conflict. The Iranians have committed genocide against the gentle, moral Bahai and the Sunni's and Shiites have been at each others throats since the early days of Islam because of this.

The thing that really puzzles me is how they see their believe in an all powerful Allah, who is capable of evil as well as good - unbounded by any earthly restrictions, requires that they do his dirty work for him. Every purpetrator of whatever butchery, believes they are the instrument of Allah. The faithful have extreme difficulty in resisting such beliefs because that could target them as the next victim (shows their "lack of faith"), much safer to go along with the extremely violent who are after all justified by clear statements in the Koran. 

Islam is an odd mixture of primitive blood lust and some sophisticated philosophy. As such it represents fairly accurately its feuding Mid Eastern tribal origins.

Unfortunately its repression of women, customs of arranged and early marriages where the women are mainly confined and kept pregnant means they will outbreed the dominant religion, Christianity, within the next 15-20 years. 

That is when our tolerant, democratic and law abiding societies will be tested to their limits. The issue will be far beyond racial profiling at that point. It will be a matter of submission to something totally alien to modern western society.


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## billbaloney (Aug 21, 2006)

Oh my god, crazy freak alert!


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## rubaiyat (Aug 21, 2006)

I take it you *have* read the Koran?


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## hawki18 (Aug 22, 2006)

Ok I give up what is sslo do not know the initials, Is it some org. in Euorpe ?


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## rubaiyat (Aug 22, 2006)

Scandinavian Sauna Liberation Organisation.

It was a joke in an earlier post about profiling blonde terrorists.


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## Rhisiart (Aug 22, 2006)

billbaloney said:


> Oh my god, crazy freak alert!


Why? 



rubaiyat said:


> &#8230;the Koran is nothing like the bible ...... the thing that really puzzles me is how they see their belief in an all powerful Allah, who is capable of evil as well as good &#8230;.


The Old Testament is full of references to a vindictive God. Take the Old Testament on its literal word and one could do all manner of terrible things to people (e.g. the Crusades). 



rubaiyat said:


> To Muslims who believe in the absolute truth of the Koran, the so-called terrorist acts are quite understandable. The terrorists are doing no more nor less than what the Koran calls for.


I think it all boils down to interpretation. I am not a Muslim, but I always believed the term Infidel refers to Muslims who abuse the teachings of the Koran (i.e. Osama bin Laden). There are very clear references in the Koran extolling Muslims to tolerate people of other faiths. 

Likewise with Jihad. As I understand it, Jihad is not about waging Holy War against Christians, but rather a personal war within oneself between good and evil (not being greedy, being faithful to one's spouse, avoiding vices etc.).

Many Islamic clerics interpret the Koran in a way that would set a good example to most Christians. The clerics who interpret the Koran in the way you have described (and I'm not getting at you here) are the ones who have politics on their minds, not theology.


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## billbaloney (Aug 22, 2006)

rubaiyat said:


> I take it you *have* read the Koran?



I have a copy here in my bookshelf, and studied it in college under a Pakistani professor that I stayed friends with for years afterwards, during which time we often discussed issues of Islam and politics.

And your interpretation is that of a crazy frickin' Islamophobic freakshow, thus my "crazy freak alert".

Perhaps you'd like to talk about the concept of "people of the book", as one example of how you're completely wrong about textual Islam's treatments of non-Muslims, which itself complicates the claim of some kind of textually-based violence against the non-Muslim.

[...takes out book...]

Let's see.  Surah 3, verse 69:

"Those who believe (in the Qur'an),
Those who follow the Jewish (scriptures),
And the Sabians and the Christians --
Any who believe in Allah
And the Last Day,
And work righteousness --
On them shall be no fear,
Nor shall they grieve."

Well.  Certainly open to interpretation, isn't it?  Next, read up on the property rights of married women in original Islamic society.

There's plenty of good and bad in the Qur'an, just as in the Bible.  There is plenty of material for those who want to use the book as an excuse for violence.  I wonder if we can think of examples of violent misinterpretation of the Bible.  Hmm, let's think about the last two thousand years....


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## Rhisiart (Aug 22, 2006)

There does seem to a strong belief amongst Christian fundamentialists that Islam is inherently evil. I think they refer to some passage in in the Book of Revelations, about the emergence of an evil religion in the last days. 

Perhaps the evil religion in the last days is fundamentialim _per se_, regardless of whether is is Jewish, Christian, Hindu or Islamic in origin.


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## fryke (Aug 22, 2006)

Only if you want the revelation to be, well, right.


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## rubaiyat (Aug 22, 2006)

Sura IX 29 Fight those who believe not in God nor the Last day, 
Nor hold that forbidden Which hath been forbidden By God and His Apostle, Nor acknowledge the Religion Of Truth (even if they are) Of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya With willing submission And Feel themselves subdued.

Sura XLVIII 29 Mohammed is God's Apostle those who follow him are ruthless to the unbelievers but merciful to one another.

Jihad's struggle against sin and "evil" is not separated from the physical struggle against non believers and is often quoted as such by the many Islamic authorities who support explicitly or implicitly Islamic terrorists.

The Koran is in marked contrast to the New Testament, Buddhist teachings, Bahaii teachings and many other creeds in its exhortation to violence and its rejoicing in violent victory over other faiths.

This is what leads Islamic scholars to their two faced approach to the west. Telling non-muslims what they'd like to hear and telling muslims who know the Koran the opposite.

You can understand any more moderate opinions are kept private as it is tantamount to a death sentence.

I know it is fashionable to condemn the Crusades, I won't hail them as holy, but how were they different to the Muslim conquests that preceeded them? 

It is just another part of the huge hypocracy of muslims who have long memories for slights against them but dismiss as not even relevent their own bloody history. Their indignation against supposed "oppression" in the modern world stands in marked contrast to their deeds in Armenia, the Sudan, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, East Timor, the Celebes, Irian Jaya, Kenya, Tanzania, Argentina, Bali, Jakarta etc. The list goes on and on. Their lack of indignation against the oppression they exact against each other truly reveals their hypocracy. A finer collection of despotic and repressive regimes would be hard to find.

Osam bin Laden and his many supporters in the Islamic world have merely adopted the circular logic and self righteously murderous oppression of the communists they fought in Afghanistan.

btw You are jumping to absurd conclusions to assume I am either a fundamentalist Christian or an extremist. Because I am neither I value my liberties and am dismayed at the absolutism of Islam and the apologetic kowtowing to it by the "politically correct". 

Nothing new there, both Communists and Nazis had their fellow travellors clearing the path for them.

PS I actually started off my study of Islam as highly sympathetic but the closer my examination of all the problems that beset it, my opinion changed. My conclusion is the problems of Islam are of its own making. The notion of conquering the world and taxing the non-believers foundered when they ran out of conquests and unbelievers willing to submit as second class citizens.


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## billbaloney (Aug 22, 2006)

Oh my goodness.

Here's the truth, big guy: I think it's safe to say that every regime that has conquered and ruled over wide swaths of humanity has been cruel, and has had its kindnesses.  There was not one monolithic "Islamic empire" that ruled Asia and parts of Europe for centuries; in fact, there were several, each with its own power base, regional differences, and peculiarities.  Some were better than others, just like the empires in China, Rome, India, Athens, the United States...you name it.

N.b., as well, that I said, "your interpretation is that of a crazy frickin' Islamophobic freakshow," and didn't make any claim about who you actually are.  I have absolutely no desire to find out any more about you, tell you the truth.

I'm really, really impressed at your sweeping conclusions, your incisive contribution to religious study, and your analysis of the current geopolitical situation.  As you well know, those who spend their time making grandiose claims about entire religions, races, ethnicities, or nations, especially on bulletin boards, are almost always right and helpful.

Sweet.  You're definitely going to write back, which is why I promise not to read this thread any more.  Bye!


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## Rhisiart (Aug 23, 2006)

billbaloney said:


> Sweet.  You're definitely going to write back, which is why I promise not to read this thread any more.  Bye!


Adios amigo. 

Five Voltaire quotes:

_"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"._

Well to a point, I guess.

_"Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities."_

Well, I think we can all agree on that one.

_"If there were only one religion in England (sic) there would be danger of despotism; if there were two they would cut each other&#8217;s throats. But there are thirty, and they live in peace and happiness."_

Of course that that wouldn't have gone down too well with Ulster politician Enoch _'Rivers of Blood'_ Powell. Despite the fact that he was a bigoted racist fecker, his predictions seem to have come to true.

(And for fryke): _"Judge of a man by his questions, rather than by his answers."_

(And for rhisiart):_"A witty saying proves nothing."_


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## reed (Aug 23, 2006)

Ever been in Mississippi or Ohio on a hot day? I won't even mention Florida.


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## Rhisiart (Aug 23, 2006)

reed said:


> Ever been in Mississippi or Ohio on a hot day? I won't even mention Florida.


Over my head M. Reed. Commenter SVP.


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## reed (Aug 23, 2006)

rhisiart....

 A metaphor.
     Red States.Terrible, stupid and dangerous thinking. US/Right Wing/Religious/ignoranant policy at present. Bush & co what. I'v seen it with my own objective eyes. Just in case there was a doubt my spies are out there as well confirming this.

 Nothing new under the sun. 

Rangoon, over and out.


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## Cat (Aug 23, 2006)

Technically, AFAIK, the unbelievers the Q'ran talks about are the primitive politheistic religions and sects spread throughout the middle-east at the time. Jews and Christians are referred to as People of The Book. All three great monotheistic traditions share their origin in Abraham/Ivrahim and got along fairly well with each other in the beginning. Jesus is even acknowledged as an important prophet by Islam. However, he is not considered the saviour and son of god. Just like the Jews, Muslims are still waiting. Doesn't that make them more open-minded on the average than those who profess already to know the ultimate truths?


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## Rhisiart (Aug 23, 2006)

Cat said:


> Technically, AFAIK, the unbelievers the Q'ran talks about are the primitive politheistic religions and sects spread throughout the middle-east at the time. Jews and Christians are referred to as People of The Book. All three great monotheistic traditions share their origin in Abraham/Ivrahim and got along fairly well with each other in the beginning. Jesus is even acknowledged as an important prophet by Islam. However, he is not considered the saviour and son of god. Just like the Jews, Muslims are still waiting. Doesn't that make them more open-minded on the average than those who profess already to know the ultimate truths?


Cat, I honestly don't know.



reed said:


> rhisiart....
> 
> A metaphor.
> Red States.Terrible, stupid and dangerous thinking. US/Right Wing/Religious/ignoranant policy at present. Bush & co what. I'v seen it with my own objective eyes. Just in case there was a doubt my spies are out there as well confirming this.
> ...


Agreed * STOP * Very dangerous * STOP * In much peril * STOP * Complete nutters * STOP * Mandalay, over and out * STOP


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## rubaiyat (Aug 23, 2006)

Cat said:


> Technically, AFAIK, the unbelievers the Q'ran talks about are the primitive politheistic religions and sects spread throughout the middle-east at the time.



Not at all as you can see by my references.



> Jews and Christians are referred to as People of The Book. All three great monotheistic traditions share their origin in Abraham/Ivrahim and got along fairly well with each other in the beginning.



Only as subjugate peoples who had to pay the Jizya, a tax on the non-believers. It was a practicality as the Muslims were initially the minority. The choice was death, slavery or conversion. Once converted, even under threat of death, changing your faith is apostasy and punishable by death. By declaring any deviation from Islam apostasy each of the sects has been able to kill the others without retribution.



> Doesn't that make them more open-minded on the average than those who profess already to know the ultimate truths?



Hardly as there is but one God and his name is Allah and Mohammed is his prophet. Christians and Jews get the protection of the law by paying the Jizya but in any legal conflict they, as unbelievers, can not give witness so the word of any muslim prevails. Women have it somewhat better, The word of 2 muslim women is equal to that of one muslim man.

People of other faiths can choose to believe their creeds, muslims have no choice. The Koran is the word and is quite clear in most cases what it says.

You do need to read a little more than just the Introduction to Islam. It is a really compelling study as it is so different from our beliefs.


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## rubaiyat (Aug 23, 2006)

As late as 1894 jizya was still being collected in Morocco; an Italian Jew described his experience there:

"The kadi Uwida and the kadi Mawlay Mustafa had mounted their tent today near the Mellah [Jewish ghetto] gate and had summoned the Jews in order to collect from them the poll tax [jizya] which they are obliged to pay the sultan. They had me summoned also. I first inquired whether those who were European-protected subjects had to pay this tax. Having learned that a great many of them had already paid it, I wished to do likewise. After having remitted the amount of the tax to the two officials, I received from the kadi&#8217;s guard two blows in the back of the neck. Addressing the kadi and the kaid, I said&#8221; &#8216;Know that I am an Italian protected subject.&#8217; Whereupon the kadi said to his guard: &#8216;Remove the kerchief covering his head and strike him strongly; he can then go and complain wherever he wants.&#8217; The guards hastily obeyed and struck me once again more violently. This public mistreatment of a European-protected subject demonstrates to all the Arabs that they can, with impunity, mistreat the Jews."

As this example shows the problem many Muslims have with Jews is that of a subject people who dares to usurp their natural masters. Much as the white Southerners in the USA direct particular venom against the ex-slave black population.

Even in its specifics this is not some ancient history, as demonstrated by the Sudanese Arabs against the southern black Christians and animists, and also against the black Sudanese of Darfur. In fact the Sudanese, Saudis and Mauritanians still practice slavery, with the justification of the Koran.


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## Cat (Aug 24, 2006)

When you say that "there is but one God and his name is Allah" I think you make a mistake. You seem to refer to the basic creed expressed by the phrase: "La ilaha illa Allah" "There is no other god than God" i.e. there is just one God. You will find the same formulation in Jewish and Christian texts. "Allah" just means God and is not a proper name. Hence, the Q'ran tells us that Allah is the same God as the God of Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Mohammed. 

What you describe concerning taxes etc. is not so very different from what has been done in the name of religion by so many christian rulers. People of other faiths have always been persecuted, expropriated, discriminated etc. think of the jews in Spain in 16th and 17th century, catholics and protestants in England, repression changing with every newly crowned king or queen, etc. etc. That doesn't make muslims any worse than christians or jews. 

About the mistreatment of "europeans" ina muslim country, isn't racial profiling the exact same thing? Mistreating people, criminalizing them because of their beliefs or ethnicity?


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## rubaiyat (Aug 24, 2006)

Cat, the difference is that the discrimination is not a dictate of the Christian New Testament, in fact it is counter to the teachings of Jesus, the Zororastrians, the Jain, the Bahaii, the Buddhists, Confucians, Daoists to just name a few. Even Judaism which had some primitive injunctions in the Old Testament has purged them from modern practice.

Infidels are still infidels. Jews were driven from Arabia and Infidels are excluded from certain Islamic sites and held inferior under Sharia so it is clear Islam does not equate belief in one God with belief in Allah.

Can you show me where Muslims have been forced to pay a poll tax and humiliated ritually in the payment? Where in western society are Muslims held to have no legal rights, unable to bear witness in a court of law? Where are Muslims not allowed to preach or proselytize?

The only reason some of the Islamic practices, such as slavery and misogynistic acts against women, have been moderated (but not eliminated) has been under pressure from the West. The fact that the West has done so seems to particularly anger many Muslims who are forming the support for militant Islam everywhere.

I do not hold with discrimination against muslims and would dearly love that that muslims reciprocated but clearly muslim violence and discrimination against non-muslims is spreading. I am hard put to find any creed or nationality that hasn't been attacked. 

What is extremely disturbing is that they hold the Koran as supporting their actions, and clearly it does. Even those who would not dream of committing any of the crimes themselves have trouble declaring those actions are in conflict with the Koran.

The crime of apostasy makes even expressing a contrary view extremely dangerous. Islam's biggest problem is it has no way of safely allowing self criticism. 

The non-muslim world emerged from most of its injustices long ago through liberalism and an increasingly open, free debate, that allowed the change. 

Islam seems to be caught in a time warp and even has a large percentage trying to turn back time and lashing out at everyone else in the process.

To address directly your last issue of "racial profiling", this does not implicitly mean discrimination or persecution. If the criminal being sought is clearly a self declared muslim and largely Arabic or South Asian, are the police discriminating by searching for those characteristics? Neither are they being persecuted when they are going through due legal process, even if that is a legal process they themselves do not practice or respect.

Those muslims standing on the sideline but acting as the militants' cheersquad are being disingenuous if they think that doesn't make them accomplices to the act and therefore bring them under suspicion also.


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## Cat (Aug 24, 2006)

The problems you report are not problems of islam as a faith, or even as an organised religion, but problems generated by Islamic nations, i.e. states where the official law is Islamic law, but the Sharia is based upon the Q'ran, it is not identical with the Q'ran and has changed over time. When have we stopped swearing on or by the bible or god in courtrooms and other pledges? Problems are generated when there is no clear separation between church and state. A personal faith becomes a tyrannical law for those who do not share it, it has happened everywhere in the world throughout history. 

The problems you address come from islamic law not from islamic faith. Crusaders supported their actions also by appealing to the bible. Many States in the USA, "one nation under god", "in god we trust", carry out the death sentence even though in the bible it says  "thou shalt not kill", how do you think they justify that? Well, you go poring over the theological literature until you find a loophole. Theologicians are notable for being even more insidious than lawyers. No wonder that fanatics can find all justification they need in their holy texts for their unholy actions.

Islam is every inch as peacful as christianity. Both can be twisted hither and tither by ruthless governments, but do not confuse the religious justification of political acts with faith.

With racial profiling you are not searching with an identikit at hand. You are scrrening millions of people that haven't yet done anything. That's racism. "Arabs/Northafricans/etc. are more likely to commit crimes, hence we keep a closer eye on them". Sounds reasonable, but is wrong. Justice cannot act by prejudging. Since when do we have a thought-police that can read minds? Since when are people condemned on vague signs of possible intentions alone? 

Do you really think that the goal (temporarily increasing the public's sense of security by showing that "something is being done") justifies the means (abandoning the democratic principle that all subjects are equal before the law and presumed innocent until proven guilty)?


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## rubaiyat (Aug 24, 2006)

Cat said:


> ...the democratic principle that all subjects are equal before the law and presumed innocent until proven guilty)?



That is the west's principle and only holds where muslims are not the government. The only Islamic country that comes remotely close is Turkey, and that is stretching it. Indonesia is working on it but mostly it is still only intent.

How do you separate Islamic faith from the Koran? It's statements are clear, not "loopholes", and not equitable to either muslims or non-muslims. Any attempt to interpret it in a milder light is met with death sentences.

Islam obtained its hold through the sword, unlike all the other creeds I nominated, and many of its exhortations, I quoted only some, are not peaceful. 

There is even a death sentence declared on anyone choosing in their own conscience to follow another faith. How is that peaceful?

The only restraint ever on muslim expansion was their ultimate military failure, something that clearly angers many of the current militants. Obviously they are determined to renew the fight and there are virtually no Islamic authorities willing to flatly condemn them for it and many eager to encourage them.

Given their tactic of striking with no warning and using suicide tactics, waiting till after the event is obviously not an option. Irregardless muslims are not being rounded up randomly. The surveilance they are under is directed at those who are actually calling for or conspiring to violence. The same as police keep an eye on skinheads. I suppose that is racial profiling to "pick on" whites with shaven heads, Union Jack T-Shirts and heavy boots? 

Broader surveillance would not be required if the muslim community itself clearly and flatly condemned the violent actions and took its own measures to weed out the perpetrators. Instead all we get is wishy washy platitudes for our benefit followed by much clearer statements that support or absolve the militants.


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## reed (Aug 24, 2006)

Who has taken a flight with "iffy" folks aboard?
    I have, twice. Air Pakistan for one. New York, Paris, Karachi. Of course "they" never explode "their" own planes but remember Air India and other "3rd World" companies that have. Whatever......

 Despite the the prayers in the corridors during the flight and the fact I couldn't get a beer, all went well. However, when I saw the pilote (because we all got off the plane at the same time at Orly), I was so glad to have arrived at my destination. Why? Because he had a prayer book in his hand and looked older then my stepfather who was 70 at the time.
1 year before 9/11.

 I don't know what the moral of the story is. I just may fly Air Pakistan again however. Just to be on the safe side.Talk about profiles?


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## rubaiyat (Aug 24, 2006)

Ever fly with JAT, The old Jugoslav airlines? The pilots were all ex Air Force. Used to stroll across the tarmac, turn over the Illyusin's engines and take straight off from a cold start. 

With the angle of ascent and descent I think they were practicing dogfights.

After all the excitement they delivered us to the wrong city, having changed destinations on the ticket without telling us. 

Definitely no "God willing" there, just a flight into the unknown in the hands of disgruntled public servants with a death wish.


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## Cat (Aug 25, 2006)

I never argued for separating the Islamic faith from the Koran, quite the contrary. I argued for separating the Islamic faith from Islamic politics. We hardly have an issue with Muslims per se, we might have an issue with Islamic governments who condone or sponsor terrorism and we surely have a problem with terrorism, no matter who perpetrates it.

If we start to apply other rules to foreigners than we apply to ourselves, our "universal" values go down the crapper. That's just apartheid all over again. Making two lines to acces the plane "white - non white" is just plain old racism. And isn't that the same problem you are pointing out in Islamic societies? That some people are not seen as full members of the community?

I'm not really impressed by your argument that under Islamic law apostates are killed. The catholic church has been burning people alive for hundreds of years for disagreeing with the official christian worldview, which rests on a literal interpretation of the bible. Pope John Paul II finally acknowledged in the 1990's that perhaps threatening Galileo wasn't such a good move after all and that perhaps they shouldn't have burned Giordano Bruno alive in 1600. What do you expect of Islam? Why would you hold it to higher standards that those we have followed in our own history? People in western europe have been blowing each other up with the same tactics in the '70 and '80, blowing up trains, plains, public buildings for the same kind of irrational idealogical wars over right and left wing politics. They haven't been defeated with mitlitary firepower, but made part of a fair and open political process. This takes some time, but if our values are truly universal, and not just because we said so and will shoot you if you don't agree, the rest of the world will come around eventually, step by step to share them. If we are the first to abandon them in times of trouble, then what values are they?


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## pds (Aug 25, 2006)

Now now Cat.

You're usually right on, and mostly right here, but "the catholic church has been burning people alive for hundreds of years..."

Ok - not a native speaker, you are forgiven for not using past tense.  

But the point is well made - the west has had it's renaissance and it's enlightenment. Islam is still trying to deal with those concepts and, granted, the terrorist response is part of it's own "inquisition."

@Rubiyat...

Sorry to hear that you think that only Islam is spread by the sword. Please look into the colonial period once again. The treatment of native mexican-americans by Jesuit priests and other church officials was the source of my discontentment with Christianity. It was the sword and the knife, not the sacrificial example of Christ that brought the cult of Jesus to the world.


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## rubaiyat (Aug 25, 2006)

I am perfectly well aware of some of the past history of christianity. One of the reasons why I am extremely concerned at the intolerant and oppressive stance of a significant part of Islam both in the past and today.

Keep in mind that Christianity's core faith is that of love for one another and to turn the other cheek. It began as a persecuted minority that gained its acceptance and most of its conversions by example and persuasion.

People typically lapse from the teachings. The examples you gave of the Conquistadores, are that of looters who used the excuse of religion to cover their own ambitions. They weren't the only ones to ever convince themselves their crimes were based on noble principles.

Where this differs from Islam is that Islam was from the beginning a martial religion with Mohammed as its commander. It's faith includes some of the tenants of love and peace but from the beginning it was brutal, killing, raping and enslaving many people that it conquered. All this happened under the leadership of its founder.

Can you imagine Jesus, Buddha, Zororaster, or Bahá'u'lláh actually going to war, looting, putting whole populations to the sword, enslaving their women and children to be sexually exploited, in the name of their God?

The death sentences on apostasy, stonings, mutilation, slavery, oppression of non-believers and women are all codified in the Koran and Sharia law. Which is why very few Islamic scholars have said Ossama bin Laden and his followers are acting contrary to the Koran, because they aren't.

Modern western democracies through the development of secular humanism have separated religion and government. Their civil law protects all their citizens, muslims as well as all other faiths. 

This particularly seems to enrage many muslims who see such toleration as contrary to their teachings which do not separate religion from government and they are willing to act on their beliefs. Their idea of paradise is to make life hell for as many people as they can. 

If we don't defend ourselves we must succumb. I don't see that as an option.


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## rubaiyat (Aug 25, 2006)

> The catholic church has been burning people alive for hundreds of years for disagreeing with the official christian worldview, which rests on a literal interpretation of the bible.



Actually the Catholic Church does not rest on a literal interpretation of the bible, for example they accept scientific evidence as to the age of the universe. A bit slow on the uptake but they got there eventually.

Can you tell me when was the last "burning" by the Catholic Church?

Now tell me when was the last stoning, beheading or amputation by Islamic authorities? 

Let's see this is Friday, so it would have to be...


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## rubaiyat (Aug 25, 2006)

Here's some good news 

Saudi Arabia promises to remove references to Christians as "swine" and Jews as "apes" in school textbooks.

Just a taste.


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## Mikuro (Aug 25, 2006)

rubaiyat said:


> Irregardless muslims are not being rounded up randomly. The surveilance they are under is directed at those who are actually calling for or conspiring to violence. The same as police keep an eye on skinheads. I suppose that is racial profiling to "pick on" whites with shaven heads, Union Jack T-Shirts and heavy boots?


There seems to be a disconnect here. I don't think anyone's saying we shouldn't touch muslims if we have good reason to believe they're up to something. That's not racial profiling; that's legitimate intelligence. Nobody's saying otherwise. The only problem is when you use race as the only reason for suspicion, which is the issue here (no matter how much rhetoric is wrapped around it by politicians).



rubaiyat said:


> The non-muslim world emerged from most of its injustices long ago through liberalism and an increasingly open, free debate, that allowed the change.
> 
> Islam seems to be caught in a time warp and even has a large percentage trying to turn back time and lashing out at everyone else in the process.


I agree a lot with this. Imagine what would happen if you took 21st-century technology and put it in the hands of Christian churches hundreds of years ago. That's basically what's happening now.

I really don't think it's fair to judge their religion/culture as harshly as many people do, because ours was no better when our society was at the level theirs is now. The world has never advanced in unison. It's like adults who chastise their kids for the same things they did when they were young.

Of course, judging them by our own standards of the past doesn't work too well either, since they're using modern, dangerous technology. It's like a child with a gun. Kids will be kids, but if they're wielding that kind of power, they'd better grow up in a hurry.

That said, I really don't think the way to help the maturation of a society is to bomb the @#$% out of it, but...well, we're lacking a bit of cultural maturity ourselves in that regard. There are some people who think all our problems will be solved by promoting literacy and education among mideastern women. I don't think it's that simple, but I like the direction, at least.



rubaiyat said:


> Here's some good news
> 
> Saudi Arabia promises to remove references to Christians as "swine" and Jews as "apes" in school textbooks.
> 
> Just a taste.


How...progressive.


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## Cat (Aug 26, 2006)

Burnings lasted well into the 18th century in Europe, enslavement of blacks ended in the second half of the 19th century in the USA, racism had its heyday in the 20th century with various racial laws. 

Still now in the west people are discriminated against for no other reason than skin color, "speaking funny" or having certain beleifs, and, yes, this sometimes leads to violence and death. 

State and church promulgated racism have been abandoned, but it took us quite some time to get there. 

Christians came to prominence once they succeded in turning their religion from a faith for slaves and women into the faith of the emperor. Half of europe was converted by the sword. You can bet that there is plenty of justification for that in the bible.


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## rubaiyat (Aug 26, 2006)

> You can bet that there is plenty of justification for that in the bible.



No there wasn't, unless you can find the quotes for me. The slavery exists in small sections of the old testament as does the eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth but is clearly contradicted by everything in the New Testament.

The vast majority of Europe was converted by evangalists. To my knowledge the sword was first drawn against the beligerent tribes in the Prussian and east Baltic regions by Charlemagne. Charlemagne can be said to have used the church to secure his political aims. 

Even the Norsemen who plagued christian Europe for centuries, capturing and selling millions of christians as slaves to the Moors in Spain, were converted by evangalists and not at the point of the sword.

The violence crept into the complex relationship between church and state once it was well founded.

Either way I am not going to absolve violence by religious extremists of whatever persuasion. For a good part of modern history we had eliminated sectarian violence in the West and it is now returning with a vengence from the East and striking not only at Christians and Jews, but Hindus,Buddhists, the Bahaii, what is left of the Zororastrians in Iran and Afghanistan and even alternate Muslim sects.

I keep coming back to this. It is being justified by what is clearly written in the Koran and the death penalty against apostasy in Islam that stops any criticism of either its contents or interpretation. Speak up against the Koran or its interpretation and you die.

Violence is a central part of the Koran whether you admit it or not. It is there in black and white. Pretending it is not is obviously not working, and seems to be taken as just a sign of a weak, corrupt western civilisation that has criticised itself into a state of permanent apologia.

Any reforms in the Islamic world against mutual self destructive violence, violence against women and other religions, ending of slavery etc have been violently opposed by those decrying those reforms as imposed by the west and unislamic. 

They're right! So what are you going to choose and what are you going to do about it?


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## Cat (Aug 27, 2006)

> Charlemagne can be said to have used the church to secure his political aims.


 And you don't think the same has happened to Islam? Is nobody in the middle-east using religion as a means to an end? So who's the culprit, the faith and the faithful or those who abuse the faith and use it as "opium for the masses"?

If tyrants and warmongers claim religious justifications for their actions, is the fault in politics or in religion?

If the state power is identified with a religious creed then when you speak up against the convenient interpretation of holy texts given by the powerful, you speak up against the dominant power. It is the worldly power of the state that reacts, not the spiritual power of the religion.

Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has reapeatedly called for peace, for unity, for an end to violence in Iraq. He has advocated free and fair democratic elections and was even nominated for the nobel peace prize for his efforts. That does not seem to be in accordance with the way you picture Islam. Sistani is a leading, politically involved Ayatollah, yet his words and actions contradict what you claim about all the violence in Islam. 

If you are referring to Iran, rather than Iraq, then again I don't see the "violent" Islam you speak of. Khamenei recently asserted that Iran would never attack any other country and that production of nuclear weapons was out of the question. In accordance with this Ahmadinejad declared that Iran had no intention to produce nuclear bombs or attack other countries, mentioning specifically Israel, he remarked that he saw elections as a solution to the current problems, not wars. 

Where is this aggressive, suppressive Islam? The "weak and corrupt" west has launched several attacks against Islamic states, no Islamic states have done so in quite some time. Small groups of fanatics which represent neither a country nor an organized religion have launches terrorist attacks across the globe, and these deranged fundamentalists have given their own personal interpretation of what their faith means to them and used it to justify crimes and political violence. However, you cannot take this as representative for the billion or so faithful muslims around the world. If it were representative, we already would have a full-scale "hot" world war right here and now. 

Despite the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon, despite all the threats issued to Syria and Iran, there is no full-scale war. The christian/jewish west has attacked and threatened several muslim countries, but they have not reacted in kind. Who is propagating violence here? 

You (grudgingly) tell me that perhaps the Old Testament is filled with a wrathfull, vengeful god, that kills men and beasts alike, but that the New testament contradicts all that. Well, isn't the Old testament part of the jewish and of the christian faith? Should we just follow the New one? Go ahead, found another protestant evangelical sect, but catholics and jews will follow the ten commandments and the Torah. Moreover, doesn't Jesus tell us that he has not come to change the laws that were given to us? Doesn't he tell us that he effectively is the son of god, the son of the god of Abraham, Moses and David who is the God of the Old Testament?

There's not as much smiting in the New Testament, but how can you honestly ignore all the passages where god kills or torments sinners or political opponents of his chosen tribe? Jesus repeatedly refers to the old prophes of the old testament and pronounces that he is in agreement with them. Doesn't he himself prophesy something like  "Brother shall kill brother, and the father the child: and the children will rise up against their parents, and cause their death." because of religious wars? Didn't Jesus come "not to bring peace, but a sword"?

If you go cherry picking quotes from assorted religious texts, you can always find engough violence and exceptions to justify your own violence and double standards. Those that do not listen to the word of god, will end like the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah: voilà your justification for bombing the hell out of those unbelieving muslims. White phosphorous on civilian population? Not a problem! Cluster bombs on residential area's? Why not: it's in the bible! Indeed: "there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth" as our saviour says, but, hey, they are not like us. So who cares if they get all the dirty stares and get searched twice as often in airports, while we are burning those who share their religious faith with "fire unquenchable".

You cannot export democracy with weapons. If change is not forthcoming out of Islamic countries, then trying to impose our ideals will only turn people against them. By military threats you strenghten those that use fear to rule, you strenghten the power of fundamentalists who preach against the west and charismatic populists who use religion to gain power. Invest in a future with dialogue, with help for the poor and famished, with education, leading by example, and you will avoid violence and oppression.


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## Rhisiart (Aug 27, 2006)

Religion is particuarly dangerous when it is fueled by political ambitions, rather than theology or a genuine passion for the well-being of humanity.

The Catholic Church was spectacularly guilty of this for hundreds of years. New Islamic states such as Iran, are _de facto_ run by Ayotollahs who most clearly have political ambitions.

Osama bin Laden's own Wahibian Sunni sect, the mainstay of Al-Queda, has a very strong political agenda (i.e. to bring about a Global Islamic Government).

Likewise, George Bush's followers believe that the creation of great wealth is an intregal part of being a good Christian and this can only be acheived by political control of both the US and oil-rich countries.

The Jews beleive they are God's children and have a God-given right to the _whole_ of Palestine.

You can argue the toss over the Bible, Torah and the Koran. But the political power brokers will use any quotes out of context from these Holy books to further their political ambitions.


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## rubaiyat (Aug 27, 2006)

rhisiart said:


> Religion is particuarly dangerous when it is fueled by political ambitions, rather than theology or a genuine passion for the well-being of humanity.



Religion is dangerous full stop. Because it claims ultimate authority on behalf of a deity/s who never seems to directly speak for Him/Themselves. Also because they claim the ultimate rewards/punishments, so anything can be justified in their name.

The Iranian Ayatollahs twin objectives against the Shah were to protect their large property holdings and theological power. Cat seems to be quite ingenuous about their nuclear ambitions, quoting (only some of) what they say, not what they are doing (now going down the plutonium path) and totally ignoring their vitriolic statements against Jews and calls to destroy Israel in the most brutal terms.

Ahmadinejad seems to be crazier than Osama bin Laden, who I think is quite calculating and lucid from his own perspective. Ahmadinejad believes in armagedon and seems hell bent on bringing it on himself.

It would be hilarious if not tragic to believe Iran is non violent. Ignoring the decades of state sponsored terrorism reaching as far as the Buenos Aires synagogue bombing, you only have to look at the internal violence against their own people, killing religious minorities as well as anyone singled out by Islamic "justice". The poor gentle Bahá'í have been particularly singled out, although all minorities suffer.



> Where is this aggressive, suppressive Islam?



Where is it not? The closest to a free democratic Islamic state is Turkey which has the blood of millions of Armenians and unknown number of Kurds on its hands. A Turk even attempted to assasinate the Pope. The next closest thing to an Islamic democracy is Indonesia which again slaughtered a quarter million East Timorese and drove a substantial number from their homes into West Timor whilst trashing the country. It is also attacking christian and animist Papuans, Christians all over but particularly in Sulawasi and Maluku, Hindus in Bali, Chinese Christians, Buddhist and Daoists in Java etc.

In Sudan there has been a vicious war against the southern Christians and animists for decades which has spread to the Dafur region and east on the border with Ethiopia. Somalia, Egypt, Algeria, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Lebanon, Jordan, Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, Thailand, The Netherlands, Spain, Germany, The Philipines, France, Nigeria, Britain, the list goes on and on. Smaller scale violence has appeared virtually everywhere, even on the idyllic beaches of Australia.

The only reason we do not have full scale war, yet, is Iran does not have the atomic bomb, yet, although they are putting all the infrastructure including long range missiles in place. Meanwhile war by proxy in Lebanon, Iraq and many other countries is doing the job nicely. The "billion or so faithful" represents many peaceful members as does any selection of humanity, but also seems to be able to spontaneously produce endless excuses and bombers.

The west has supressed violent Islamic states where provoked and rescued muslims in Kosovo, bombing christian Serbia into submission to do so. Attempts to protect humanitarian assistance in other locations such as Somalia and Lebanon were attacked.

Do not take any of this as support of George W. Bush's war in Iraq. The man is an idiot and I can find no other, kinder way of putting it.

I am not going to bat for the Israelis either, but they were attacked by the Arab Nations on formation of their state and have been essentially at war since. In the process they have become a classic case of power and greed corrupting an intelligent moral people. I figure they believe they have nothing to gain from Arabs, whatever agreements they come to another group will break them. I believe the lessons from the holocaust (which is alternately denied by the Iranians and then criticised as not thorough enough) haunt them, that they believe they ultimately stand alone or perish.

I will squash the absurd statement that rhisiart made that "The Jews beleive they are God's children and have a God-given right to the whole of Palestine." There are plenty of Jews, even orthodox, who believe Israel has no such thing. Some of the most orthodox in fact believe Zionist Israel has no right of existence at all.

Cat your quotes from the New Testament mystify me, could you please give me references. Where are you getting these from? Hopefully not Saudi textbooks.

You clearly are not representing an extremist view, but within the Arabic world and beyond, ludicrous "facts" such as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion are promulgated and fueling all this blood letting.

Given that such "knowledge" permeates muslim society and spontaneously materialises into violence why should we not attribute the violence to its source, islamic prejudice?


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## rubaiyat (Aug 28, 2006)

btw Cat everytime I hear or see the Hezbollah, Hamas or any radical Arabs weaping over the deaths of innocent civilians, for whom I genuinely do feel sorry, I am reminded of images that stick in my mind.

1. The celebration of Palestinian self government where gunmen firing up into the air killed a young girl. 

2. The Arab family that was struck by one of the first Hezbollah rockets into Israel.

3. The celebration of Palestinians when Sadam Hussein invaded Kuwait and the planes struck the World Trade centre.

4. The holy Shiite mosques blown up to incite sectarian violence.

5. The Iraqi Imams blown up by other Iraqi Imams over a turf war for Iraqi "hearts and minds"

6. The town of Lockerbie with the ruins of the Jumbo jet plowed through it.

7. The Libyan diplomat shooting the London policewoman

8. The Jordanian suicide bomber who told his wife to leave the Royal Hotel, when her bomb belt developed a fault, then let off his own bomb filled with ball bearings and nails.

9. Wheelchair-bound Leon Klinghoffer being thrown off the Achille Lauro by Palestinians.

10. The hundreds of Kenyan and Tanzanians killed and maimed in the African US embassy bombings

11. The statues of Buddha in Afghanistan being blown up by the Taliban

12. The soccer stadium in Kabul, built with western aid money, being used by the Taliban to stone to death "adultresses" or anyone else fallen foul of the Islamic police.

13. Lebanese Shiites cheering on rockets fired into Israel.

14. The blood covered Indonesian guards killed and maimed by bombers outside of the Australian embassy in Jakarta.

15. Captives having their heads sawn off.

16. The people who praised Saddam Hussein and his "good" reign of murder and terror in the name of Arabs.

There are too many images, they all blur one into another. Mostly they are of a people hell bent on revenge, real or imagined, at no matter what cost. People whose emotional control seems to be permanently set on "hate" and not "peace".


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## Cat (Aug 28, 2006)

> Cat seems to be quite ingenuous about their nuclear ambitions, quoting (only some of) what they say, not what they are doing (now going down the plutonium path) and totally ignoring their vitriolic statements against Jews and calls to destroy Israel in the most brutal terms.



Do you actually know what is needed to produce nuclear weapons? Weapons grade uranium needs at the very very least 20% enrichment, Iran is capable of less than 5%. You need thousands of centrifuges to enrich enough uranium for use in a nuclear reactor with ~2.5 - 4% enrichment, and many thousands more to reach true weapons-grade at more than 80% enrichment. Iran has just done basic test runs of its machinery, and has hundreds, not thousands of centrifuges in operation. When the plant at Natanz is completed it may house something around ~5000 centrifuges. 

Iran has signed and ratified the Anti-Proliferation treaty, unlike Israel. Iran has been inspected by the IAEA and its director El-Baradei:



> The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has called on the world for calm on the Iran nuclear issue, saying there was no imminent threat from Tehran.
> 
> There is a lot of hype, IAEA chief, Dr Mohamed ElBaradei, said here on Thursday of Tehran&#8217;s nuclear agenda, adding that a fine line needs to be drawn between hype and reality.



About the bible: 
Matthew
10:14 And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words, when ye depart out of that house or city, shake off the dust of your feet.
10:15 Verily I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrha in the day of judgment, than for that city.
(same in Mark 6:11, Luke 10:10-10:12)

Those that do not receive The Word will be punished, destroyed, worse than Sodom. 

Matthew 10:21 And the brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father the child: and the children shall rise up against their parents, and cause them to be put to death.
10:22 And ye shall be hated of all men for my name's sake: but he that endureth to the end shall be saved.

Even if your faith will bring you to fight your family, don't be afraid to kill your parents or your siblings for your faith, as you will be saved for your faith.

John 3:36 He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.

15:6 If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned.

Those who not believe in Jesus will "not see life" (be killed?) and God will seek vengeance on him. Those that do not believe in Jesus will be rounded up by his followers and burned, for not sharing their faith.

Again, I'm not impressed by your list. Similar lists can be given for most religions, states or races. Such lists are worthless and do not constitute an argument either for or against racial or religous profiling.

There's a lot of stupid reasons for killing or getting killed and I agree that religion might be one of the most stupid. Also there are a lot of stupid ways to waste money. "Security" as we are doing it now might be one of the most stupid. If you want to save lives, ban smoking and drinking and you'll save more lives and money than by "spur-of-the-moment" security measures that essentially give up the "western" values that we try to "defend" by implementing them.


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## rubaiyat (Aug 28, 2006)

"The primary reason cited by the IAEA for its continued skepticism is "Iran's past pattern of concealment." 

As such Iran has been heavily criticised by worried neighbors and the regulators because it has repeatedly hidden what it is really doing, despite signing the non-proliferation treaty.

Odd behavior for a country engaged in peaceful nuclear development and signing the treaty. Given the concealment I am curious that you know the extent of what they are doing. From all reports their enrichment program is widely distributed throughout the country, another sign that it is not for peaceful purposes.

Concealment like with Israel's nuclear program has only one objective.

Signing the non-proliferation treaty gave Iran access to technology that otherwise would have been denied it. That is why it is now facing sanctions.

Combined with its belligerence, stated enmities and lack of democratic restraint this is a recipe for starting an entire new cycle of escallating violence in the region.

*New Testament quotes*

The quotes from Matthew are referring to the judgement day and the consequences *to* the apostles for preaching Jesus's word, not what they should do, or should be done to others. In full the section says (from Young's literal translation):

 14`And whoever may not receive you nor hear your words, coming forth from that house or city, shake off the dust of your feet,

 15verily I say to you, It shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for that city.

 16`Lo, I do send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves, be ye therefore wise as the serpents, and simple as the doves.

 17And, take ye heed of men, for they will give you up to sanhedrims, and in their synagogues they will scourge you,

 18and before governors and kings ye shall be brought for my sake, for a testimony to them and to the nations.

 19`And whenever they may deliver you up, be not anxious how or what ye may speak, for it shall be given you in that hour what ye shall speak;

 20for ye are not the speakers, but the Spirit of your Father that is speaking in you.

 21`And brother shall deliver up brother to death, and father child, and children shall rise up against parents, and shall put them to death,

 22and ye shall be hated by all because of my name, but he who hath endured to the end, he shall be saved.

I can't find: 



> Even if your faith will bring you to fight your family, don't be afraid to kill your parents or your siblings for your faith, as you will be saved for your faith.



Is this your paraphrasing?

Likewise the quote from John is taken out of context. I can see how those who engaged in witch burnings etc did use this literally. Like you said if people want to manipulate the text they will. 

Here is the full parable, and the trouble is with parables the simple minded or devious will take it literally. I suppose when Jesus spoke of his disciples as fishermen and shepherds, congregations should have been drowned and forced to eat grass.

John 15

 1`I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman;

 2every branch in me not bearing fruit, He doth take it away, and every one bearing fruit, He doth cleanse by pruning it, that it may bear more fruit;

 3already ye are clean, because of the word that I have spoken to you;

 4remain in me, and I in you, as the branch is not able to bear fruit of itself, if it may not remain in the vine, so neither ye, if ye may not remain in me.

 5`I am the vine, ye the branches; he who is remaining in me, and I in him, this one doth bear much fruit, because apart from me ye are not able to do anything;

 6if any one may not remain in me, he was cast forth without as the branch, and was withered, and they gather them, and cast to fire, and they are burned;

 7if ye may remain in me, and my sayings in you may remain, whatever ye may wish ye shall ask, and it shall be done to you.

 8`In this was my Father glorified, that ye may bear much fruit, and ye shall become my disciples.

 9According as the Father did love me, I also loved you, remain in my love;

Again could you please point me to any acts of violence on the part of Jesus, Buddha, Confuscius, Zororaster, the Jains, Bahá'u'lláh etc? Did they declare war on others, kill and enslave them? Take their women and children and use them for their own pleasure? Force them to convert at the point of a sword? Mohammed did.

This still remains a fundamental difference which you have not reconciled with the claim of Islam being "a faith of peace".

You also missed my point as to the weaping and wailing of Hezbollah et al. They are not really concerned about the loss of life on their own side, let alone anyone else's. 

All they are concerned with is the Muslim Martyr factory. The more bodies thrown on the pile the better. The gullible are persuaded they get a free rack of sex slaves with every bomb delivered. Even corporate America hasn't come up with a sales incentive to match.

I am 100% on your side that we should get rid of drinking, smoking, and possibly even cars to save lives. But that's hardly an either/or with terrorism.


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## Cat (Aug 29, 2006)

> Combined with its belligerence, stated enmities and lack of democratic restraint this is a recipe for starting an entire new cycle of escallating violence in the region.


Belligerence: list me the wars started by Iran. List me the stated enimities that are not mutual. And explain to me what you mean by "democratic restraint", if you just mean Iran is not a democracy like half of western europe, then OK, but that's painfully obvious. However, not all forms of government that are not fully democratic are inherently evil. Why in many european states we still have hereditary monarchies, which means that the head of state is not elected democratically. Other states which are democratical use pre-emptive strikes and torture. Democracy is no gurantee of goodness, perhaps it is just a necessary but not sufficient prerequisite.  

"Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man&#8217;s enemies will be the members of his household." (Matthew 10:34-36 NASB)

"I have come to cast fire upon the earth; and how I wish it were already kindled!" ... "Do you suppose that I came to grant peace on earth? I tell you, no, but rather division; for from now on five members in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three."... (Luke 12:49,51-53 NASB)

"If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple." (Luke 14:26 NASB)

Did Jesus et al. actually fight and engage in violence against his/their enemies? Well, Mohammed, like Jesus, was persecuted in the initial phase of his relgious conversion. He was forced out of Mecca and repeatedly attacked. Perhaps unlike other founders of religions, he fought back and won. Mecca sent various raids against Medina, which they lost. A ceasefire was accorded, which the Meccans broke, Muhammed marched on Mecca with a superior force and after small border skirmishes, the Meccans surrendered. Islamic monotheism was established over pagan politheism and idol worship. Muhammed himself explicitly acknowledged that he was continuing the tradition of the religion of Abraham, Moses and Jesus and brokered peace with the Jews and other "people of the book". While Jesus did not fight either the established clergy or the roman occupier, innumerable leaders throughout history have shed blood in his name. However, both Jesus and Mohammed constituted a grave threat to established authority, not because of potential wars, but because they subtly but profoundly changed the social and cultural status quo. Both had peaceful messages: "fight those who fight you and do not commit aggression for God does not like those who commit aggression" (Q'ran 2:190-191) I think fighting in self defence is acceptable for a persecuted and oppressed minority. Mohammed did not wage wars of conquest to spread his word, and early christian communities had also to fight back in order to survive. Interpreting this as saying that Islam is a religion founded on violence and bloodshed is a distortion. 

If you make long lists of what you think is hypocritical behaviour on part of guerrilla organizations and think this serves as an argument against a religous faith you are mistaken. If you expected me to post a list ranging from Abu-Ghraib to Guantanamo and Falluhjah, then you are mistaken again. It is of no value to post those lists, what would they prove? That both parties at war "sin" against the highest principles they hold sacred? Well, isn't that obvious? When you take up a sword to win an argument you have already lost.

In this respect, think of what Ghandi had to say about Mohammed:



> "I wanted to know the best of one who holds today undisputed sway over the hearts of millions of mankind ... I became more than convinced that it was not the sword that won a place for Islam in those days in the scheme of life. It was the rigid simplicity, the utter self-effacement of the Prophet, the scrupulous regard for his pledges, his intense devotion to his friends and followers, his intrepidity, his fearlessness, his absolute trust in God and in his own mission. These and not the sword carried everything before them and surmounted every obstacle. When I closed the 2nd volume (of the prophet's biography), I was sorry there was not more for me to read of the great life."


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## fryke (Aug 29, 2006)

Like my history teacher used to say: Democracy is the worst form of government - with the exception of every other form of government. 

Don't believe democracy alone would bring peace to a whole region. If you at the same time assume that the various groups in a region want to bash each others heads, you also have to assume that they would vote for persons who would favour continued head-bashing.  And if the intention is to simply "control" these countries from the outside, then that's one fine way of selling another dictatorship as "democracy" and "freedom".

There needs to be a vision. And I'm not sure the vision of Mr. Bush is to the liking of a majority of people in the Middle East, because it'd probably go something like: "We want there to be a couple of weak democracies we can leech on." Of course it would be disguised as things like "freedom" etc. again.


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## rubaiyat (Sep 18, 2006)

> When you take up a sword to win an argument you have already lost.



Yet again we have Muslims killing a humanitarian nun in Somalia, firebombing churches and threatening the Pope, because of "lies" that they are violent.

Irony, along with any sense of self criticism, is obviously not a core belief of Islam.

Why not? The model for this violent reaction to any criticism is Muhammad himself, who had Ka'b bin al-Ashraf a local Jewish poet killed for "maligning" him. Similarly he did not rebuke but rewarded the murder of Abu Jahl, in cold blood, with the spoils of the deceased. The same with Umaih and even his uncle Abu Lahab for having rebuked him for threatening them.

I suggest readers follow up on your little glossed over events of the early years of Muslim "conversion".

The "skirmishes" by the "peaceful" Muslims resulted in the killing of the Meccans who were defending a caravan being attacked by Muhammad and his followers. The Muslims took their victory as a sign of their righteousness, and therefore a sign to continue the violence, when by all accounts it was more a result of the half heartedness of the Meccans themselves.

Contrary to your statements the people of that time were not all pagans, most were Jewish and Christian, whom Muhammad personally "converted".

Just one example of how the conversion was done. After defeating the Jewish tribe of Bani Qurayzah he had all 700 men sat along trenches dug in the tribe's marketplace, where the muslims beheaded them. The women and children were enslaved. That enslavement meant rape because in the words of the prophet: "Forbidden to you are your mothers, your daughters, your sisters, your paternal and maternal aunts... Also married women, *except those whom you own as slaves.* Such is the decree of God" Sura 4:23-24.

Those tribes that "chose to convert", clearly had the options set out for them.

Muslims do not apologise for any of this, after all this was Muhammad, the model for all muslim behaviour. Then and now.

Time and again we see what really angers "peaceful" Muslims. Not violence itself which is seen as irrelevent if perpetrated against non-muslims, but any criticism of Islam, no matter how patently obvious.


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## Cat (Sep 19, 2006)

And how does this relate to the admissibility of racial profiling? Would we not commit the same errors? Or do you think it is most appropriate to fight fire with fire? Have you ever asked your local christian priests to apologize for all the sorrow that the christian churches have done? Do you always take the actions of fanatical minorities as representative of the majority? In Basra 150 people out of a million protested in the streets against the pope. Wow, that sure is a threat ... When was the last time an islamic country invaded another?


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## rubaiyat (Sep 19, 2006)

Cat said:


> And how does this relate to the admissibility of racial profiling?



It is you who choose to call it racial profiling, because you do not want an investigation of islamic terrorists within the muslim community! 

Perhaps we should be  "racially profiling" the Bahá'í, like in Iran at the end of a rope. 

Or like the Islamic countries that "racially profile" their Christian and Jewish minorities. The few they have not killed or persecuted into exile.



> Would we not commit the same errors? Or do you think it is most appropriate to fight fire with fire?



Turn the other cheek again, as an admission of guilt? 

What do you suggest, convert under duress and join the islamic Borg?



> Have you ever asked your local christian priests to apologize for all the sorrow that the christian churches have done?



Have you asked your imam to apologise for all the crimes of jihad, forced conversion, honor killings, sanctioned rape, slavery, violent subjugation of women, Jews, the Bahá'í, Christians, even fellow Muslims? Not to mention Al Qaida!

Appointed by Allah and a perfect example in everything, I guess an apology is not to be expected. He probably explained it is all a plot of the Jewish cabal and the CIA to try and make muslims look bad.

Yes, I have asked christian priests who almost fall over themselves to agree. They have all taken to wearing hair shirts.

I'm sure the Somali nun, despite her humanitarian work, was apologising when they shot her.



> Do you always take the actions of fanatical minorities as representative of the majority?



Fanatical minorities or majorities seem to be a marked feature of islam. "Moderate" muslims, who only seem to survive in non-muslim countries, barely raise a voice against the actions of the minorities.

Real outrage is reserved for ubiquitious perceived "insults to islam".

Islam's aim is to cow everyone into silence. Even the Catholic Church is having to take extreme measures to prevent another muslim assassination attempt on the Pope.

Time to take stock of the Ummah's extreme beliefs, prejudices and even basic understanding of the society they choose to live in. My barber hasn't a clue about Christmas! What parallel universe is he living in?

Having been given refuge from their own crappy islamic countries they want to drag ours down to their level. Unfortunately they may be succeeding.



> When was the last time an islamic country invaded another?



We are only talking about the last time? Only other islamic countries? Not the entire span of history? 

Post World War II:

Iraq v Iran, Iraq v Kuwait, Morrocco v Western Sahara, Algeria v Morrocco, Syria v Lebanon, Lybia v Chad, Lybia v Tunisia, Lybia v Burkina Fasso, Pakistan v Bangladesh, Sudan v its neighbors. And when Iran gets the bomb...

What parallel universe are you living in?

The one where the Jewish baby eating cabal and the CIA bombed the World Trade Centre?


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## Viro (Sep 20, 2006)

Cat said:


> About the bible:
> Matthew
> 10:14 And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words, when ye depart out of that house or city, shake off the dust of your feet.
> 10:15 Verily I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrha in the day of judgment, than for that city.
> ...



The difference is that it isn't down to the Christians to punish. Note, it refers to the day of judgment, at the end of time, where *God* is judge. Not Christians.



> Matthew 10:21 And the brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father the child: and the children shall rise up against their parents, and cause them to be put to death.
> 10:22 And ye shall be hated of all men for my name's sake: but he that endureth to the end shall be saved.
> 
> Even if your faith will bring you to fight your family, don't be afraid to kill your parents or your siblings for your faith, as you will be saved for your faith.



It's hilarious how you choose to misread that passage. Even in the verses you've quoted, it is clear that it isn't the Christian who will fight his family. Rather, it is his family who will fight him because of his faith. It is nice how you chose to cut the quite short at 10:22. For 10:23 states "When you are persecuted in one place, flee to another. I tell you the truth, you will not finish going through the cities of Israel before the Son of Man comes". Notice the assumption that Christians are the ones who are being *persecuted* instead of *persecuting*? And what is the response? To wage war? No, it is to move on to a different place, preaching the gospel.



> John 3:36 He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.
> 
> 15:6 If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned.
> 
> Those who not believe in Jesus will "not see life" (be killed?) and God will seek vengeance on him. Those that do not believe in Jesus will be rounded up by his followers and burned, for not sharing their faith.



Again you are choosing to misread and completely misrepresent Christian theology. Unlike Islam that seeks to unite the world in submission to Allah under his one Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), the Christian Kingdom is the one in the life to come. You may think them stupid for believing in the after life, but that *is* the goal of all Christian teaching. Upon death, we are judged for our deeds, and hence it is imperative that everyone trust in Jesus because all will be found short of the mark, apart from those who belong to Jesus.


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## Viro (Sep 20, 2006)

rubaiyat said:


> I'm sure the Somali nun, despite her humanitarian work, was apologising when they shot her.



Actually, she forgave her killers with her final breaths. http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/09/18/africa/AF_GEN_Somalia_Nun_Killed.php


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## Rhisiart (Sep 20, 2006)

I am very sad about the killing of a nun, but I don't see any thing different about that incident and the killing of children in Baghdad by Rumsfeld's 'Strike & Awe' bombing at the start of the Iraq war. Both acts were cowardly. 

To go back to my original posting on this thread, my daughter and I travelled from Manchester to Stuttgart last weekend. I have never witnessed such careful security checks anywhere before on my previous travels (even Tel Aviv airport). My seven year-old daughter's half eaten chocolate bar was carefully scrutinised by three security officers. 

My daughter and I are white. Others in my queue where Pakistani or Indian. None of us of were treated any differently.

So no evidence of racial profiling at all.


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## rubaiyat (Sep 20, 2006)

I gave up on trying to give tit for tat rebuttals on the misquotes, it got too lengthy and tedious.

I am waiting on Cat to ask for references to Muhammad's killings. I have plenty more to add if he wants, but I am sure he knows what I am quoting.

This is the very issue that the muslims were once again rioting over. You'd think they hadn't read their own Koran or the hadiths. 

Beliefs being beliefs you are not going to get believers to actually accede to reality no matter what the facts. That is the trouble with beliefs, there is a circularity to the logic that allows anything because it is self affirming. Muhammad is the one true prophet because Allah said so. How do we know Allah said so? Because the one true prophet said so. 

There are signs of Allah ofcourse favoring Muhammad above all others. Whenever Muhammad needed for example to have more than the requisite 4 wives or to marry his son's wife, Allah always supplied him with the necessary revelation.

There is also the problem that none of this comes from original sources. Just as with Jesus, the Koran was written and assembled by others much later, which was made even more difficult by the many forgeries circulating the Islamic world. 

Islam has neatly solved the problem of proving actual veracity by adding a death sentence to anyone who questions any of this too closely. 

I agree with Cat, Muhammad's story is fascinating like many historic figures. Naturally everything has been interpreted, to make Muhammad look good no matter what he did, even though some of his deeds were frankly horiffic. That muslims unapologetically chronicled all this just goes to show how unimportant the fate of non-muslims was in their view. 

Apocryphal stories are always written about leaders, usually by people who were never there. Take Washington cutting down the cherry tree, all made up ofcourse, but happily repeated forever.

Observing this, I wonder where Tony Robbins will end up. If all his books are gathered together posthumously into a testament by his acolytes. His ability to change lives, perform miracles (reduce weight and improve income) and lead people onto a new path in life will certainly make him a prophet. Did I spell that right?


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## rubaiyat (Sep 20, 2006)

rhisiart said:


> I am very sad about the killing of a nun, but I don't see any thing different about that incident and the killing of children in Baghdad by Rumsfeld's 'Strike & Awe' bombing at the start of the Iraq war. Both acts were cowardly.



Much as I intensely dislike Rumsfeld, I don't think he was aiming at the children, whereas the nun's murderer was definitely aiming at her and everything she stood for.


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## rubaiyat (Sep 20, 2006)

btw Love your Norman Wisdom icon. I still wet myself when I think about him tangling his bicycle up in the Lady Mayoress' chandelier.


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## rubaiyat (Sep 21, 2006)

Cat: I forgot another muslim v muslim conflict: 

Indonesia's Confrontasi, when it tried to invade Malaysia.


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## Cat (Sep 21, 2006)

Viro said:
			
		

> It's hilarious how you choose to misread that passage.


 Which I did to show how easy it is to take fragments out of context to try to prove you're right.

A parallel universe with a jewish baby eating cabal? No, I live in the parallel universe of Israeli soldiers training Kurdish soldiers in the eventuality of a civil war in Iraq, which will split the country and lead to the establishment of Kurdistan as a buffer state.

About the "muslim invasion", perhaps I was unclear, let me rephrase what I meant. I did not mean "when was the last time an islamic country attacked another islamic country", I meant "when was the last time that an Islamic country (which had adopted the Sharia as civil law) invaded another, non Islamic country to annex it and impose Islamic law on it". That better? Let's make a concrete counter-example: Iraq invading Kuwait is not what I mean. Iraq was a secular (=non-religous) military dictatorship which invaded Kuwait for economical reasons. So, please, have another go at it.



> Beliefs being beliefs you are not going to get believers to actually accede to reality no matter what the facts.


That, unfortunately, is too often true.



> Muhammad is the one true prophet because Allah said so. How do we know Allah said so? Because the one true prophet said so.


This is also true, mutatis mutandis, of christianity and all major revealed religions. God exists because the Bible says so. The Bible is true because it is inspired by God. 



> Islam has neatly solved the problem of proving actual veracity by adding a death sentence to anyone who questions any of this too closely.


This is a classic of any totalitarian regime, and the same tactic used by the Catholic Church. Eat flaming death, heretic! Islam, however, is a religion, not a sovereign state. Also China throws dissident in jail for opposing the ruling party. Your statement is probably true of many authoritarian governments, also for countries where Islam is the main religion, but is it therefore true of Islam as a religion? 

Back on topic: Racial profiling. How do you correlate race with religion? How can you identify someones religion at all except by asking? Do you want to force everybody to register his creed on their passports? How do you decide which ones are risks? Are Sunni's more inclined to blow up aeroplanes that Shiites? What about finer distinctions? Are Salafi's more dangeous that Wahabis? Could you say whether Monophysites are more dangerous that Nestorians? What about those that would say, yea, I'm Christian or Muslim, but have no idea at all about fine theological differences? Do you think all Roman Catholics are fully aware of what it is that they believe? Ask someone about the "filioque" controversy (and don't go looking it up on wikipedia first!). If we can generalize about Protestants and Catholics and call them Christians, and we can generalise about Sunni and Shia and call them Muslims, why is there such a problem in generalising about Christians, Muslims and Jews? There's really not such a big difference in the creeds themselves, but only in holy rites and worldy customs, which technically are side-effects. Less that a hundred years ago no man or woman would leave their home in western europe without a hat or a scarf. It simply was not done. And in a Church you would take it off. That's custom for you. Now we complain about Islam's headscraves. It really is ridiculous. We go to war over things like this?

Cue music: "When will we ever learn?" / "Wann wird man je verstehn?" (preferably the version by Marlene Dietrich)


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## rubaiyat (Sep 21, 2006)

> Which I did to show how easy it is to take fragments out of context to try to prove you're right.



I appreciate that, but unfortunately the quotes and references to Islam's early and not so early history is not taken out of context. Islam has violence at its core, prescribes it in the Koran and reinforces it with constant threats of violence against anyone who is even vaguely critical.

Neither are the cases I sited, of Sudan as a sharia state, nor the peculiar islamism of Gaddafi. Narrowly defining your version of islamic states is just that, an attempt at eliminating real world examples. Thankfully it has been quite some time since  fanatical Islamic states were strong enough to force their flavor of religion on anyone except their own hapless citizens. That doesn't stop them trying though. 

The fact that they have been held at bay is not to their credit, just a symptom of the economic and cultural stagnation they bring on themselves. Iran, Syria, Lybia, Pakistan and Sudan have found other ways to plague their neighbors. Iran particularly is working hard at building up its military and it seems is intent on gaining nucleur weapons. It already has the missiles to deliver them.

Islam is ofcourse not the only example of the circular logic of religious "proof" but it is currently almost unique in using violence against any scholars or critics who debate its merits. It has got to the dangerous state of cowing anybody saying anything except innane flattery. Muhammad himself killed his critics and prescribed in the Koran those "offenses" where Mulsims may kill without retribution. Those who go out and kill in the name of Islam are only following his instructions.



> ...but is it therefore true of Islam as a religion?



Well yes, it is true of Islam as a religion.

Just as it is true of the Japanese sect that gassed the Tokyo subways and the fringe religious nutters in Waco, Jonestown, Utah, and various African countries such as Uganda. Civilised people have adopted an unfortunate code of moral equivalence that forgives the worst excesses in the name of tolerance. Time to stop and stand up for our principles.



> Back on topic: Racial profiling. How do you correlate race with religion



No-one is correlating race with religion. Several apprehended extremists have been neither Arabs nor Asians. What I think you and others are trying to do is put up a smoke screen of racism because a large portion of the extremists are obviously Arabs or Asians.

As such you are making a difficult job even harder, by shielding extremists. 

If you are unhappy with the unwanted suspicion that is falling on the muslim community, take it up with the real instigators of the problem, the extremists and their supporters who seem to take comfort from the "moderate" muslims silence or qualified agreement.


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## rubaiyat (Sep 21, 2006)

btw I have a lot of sympathy with the Kurds, although I am unaware of any Israeli military training. Do you have any substantiating proof?

I am inclined to think this is a red herring, because Israel would not want to imperil its good relations with Turkey, the strongest Middle Eastern nation.

The Iraqi Kurds seem to have the only functional and decent government in that sorry country. They mostly treat their women decently as well. It is a pity their homelands got divided up amongst several nations. They deserve to have a country of their own.

NB I found the news story you were referring to. Hardly seems the core of an army. The Israeli training company may be genuine, but then the Middle East has seen stranger things. The Turkish FM was being very disingenuous with his statement that Turkey has always defended the Kurds. In the same way as it "defended" the Armenians.


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