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)
