Muslim awareness classes for schools?

[MarillionFan]

Fundamentalist christians are alive and well in America, they aren't quite the same level of mentalist but they're not far off

The KKK they are not though

The thread is about Muslim awareness in schools and why would you need it. My point is valid. The reason is there is misunderstanding and mistrust because of the acts of fundermentalists. The media covers the news. It's not the medias fault is it.

[original PM]

you know maybe it is just that quite a few of the people interveiwed for the poll had met a number of muslims and for whatever reason found them to be incrdedibly untrustworthy?

could that be the answer?

[mudskipper]

Muslim friends are very useful, as they're happy to drive on a night out.

[amcdonald]

I await a rational response to my reasonable points.

It is a bizarre blind spot that leads otherwise reasonable people to conclude that despite groups that

1, commit acts of violence and murder who refer to islam in the naming of their organisations
2, state that they are committing the atrocities in the name of islam and
3, more recently in the case of the mall massacre attempted to murder non muslims only by asking about their 'holy' book

... somehow none of it has anything to do with islam.

Do you wonder why you are unable to piece that together? I would like a rational, reasonable, logical explanation. If you cannot provide one how do you account for your views?

They'll just say JAC! to invalidate their argument

[MarillionFan]

They'll just say JAC! to invalidate their argument

Dont encourage him.

[minestrone]

You clearly don't understand the difference between culture and religion.

[NotAllThere]

The bible advocates violence to women in certain circumstances. Before you say the New Testament didn't say that, Jesus did tell his followers to follow the Old Testament laws.

That's highly debatable. That may be your interpretation of what he said, but many many Christians, including St Paul, interpreted it rather differently. In fact, James, the brother of Jesus and leader of the first church, said that non-jews need only refrain from idolatry, sexual immorality and eating meat with blood in it. Specifically, they are not bound by the Mosaic law.

The OT also advocates violence to men in certain circumstances. Does that make it misandryous?

What if there was a religion that was preaching misogyny and homophobia. What if it told its followers to convert non members of that religion ..

.Sounds like Christianity.

While not denying for one moment there's a lot of misogyny and homophobia within the church, it's not something that's preached on continually in the mainstream. It's more institutional homophobia and misogyny - the latter esp. the Catholic church with a male only priesthood; in the many protestant churches there's no issue with women leadership. In the letters of Paul there are 2 or 3 sentences which have been used to marginalise women, but taking everything he wrote, he is far from misogynistic, especially in the context of the times. As far as homophobia goes, there is no doubt whatsoever that Paul, drawing on his Jewish heritage, considered homosexual activity to be sinful. However, homosexuality was widespread in the first century CE, and it's not something he majored on at all (again, just a few sentences), so I'm not entirely convinced that this something that should be given theological emphasis.

Where Christianity differs from the fictional religion described above, is that Christianity in its core teaching (as opposed to later interpretation with over emphasis on a few sentences), does not promote violence, conversion by force, subjugation of women.

[NotAllThere]

Interesting point.

She grew up in an unstable environment, apparently found stability and security in an extreme interpretation of Islam. I suspect if she'd fallen in with whatever the modern equivalent of Badder-Meinhof is, the result would have been similar.

[amcdonald]

Interesting point.

She grew up in an unstable environment, apparently found stability and security in an extreme interpretation of Islam. I suspect if she'd fallen in with whatever the modern equivalent of Badder-Meinhof is, the result would have been similar.

Who would have thought that Aylesbury was a hotbed of Islamo Fascists though, that's the shocking bit.

[Mich the Tester]

Until the moderate Muslims sort out the extremists then unfortunately they will be grouped in with the nutters by some.

How on earth are they supposed to do that? Do any of us have a clue what to do to 'sort out' the BNP or any of the other extreme right groups in Europe? No. We don't, so how can we expect your average muslim to 'sort out' the extremists?