Reply to: Are we in a new age of Islamo-fascism?

[lexington_spurs]

Are we in a new age of Islamo-fascism?

No, we are still in the old one.

HTH

[maxima]

no. i wasnt

i did search for 'trust' trying to figure out what collective wisdom said about EBT. but instead I found lot of funny stuff abt muslims, nigerians and other friends of green pease.

[threaded]

Oh, so Christians, Muslims and Jews living together in reasonable harmony for 700 years in "El Andaluse" in Spain is a complete myth then?

Yes. It's a myth.

[pisces]

He drunk.

[cojak]

What are you doing digging up old posts, Maxima?

Bored with the current crop, are we?

[maxima]

islam is very simple - if you are not with us you are against us. the 'old' islam says - then kill all of them who cannot be converted. now 'moderate' islam says - lets tolerate those who cannot be converted.

but surely this is a question of power. if they can not achieve killing in mass then they are going to pretend to tolerate...

Iran is going to be a first time when they can afford not to tolerate us anymore...

[AlfredJPruffock]

I think you are probably right Alf but I would really like to know how they get to the stage of blowing people (or themselves) up. I cannot believe that anyone who does not already have sadistic or sociopathic tendencies could be persuaded to do something like that or encourage others to do it. I would love to hear the conversation that gives them justification for the murder of innocents. Unless of course the innocents are portrayed as guilty some how.

Aye John

Ive no idea,altough murdering innocents and still being alive afterwards without repenting is probably just as evil.

Still as somebody once said ...

Hate Nothing but Hatred

[John Galt]

My guess would be the same that motivates any extremists, whether they be Christian Zionist Islamic or Communist Fundamentalists, a fanatical belief that THEY are the chosen ones that THEY are correct and your life therefore is inconsequential.

Mind you ,you dont hear a lot about Tao Fundamentalists ....

I think you are probably right Alf but I would really like to know how they get to the stage of blowing people (or themselves) up. I cannot believe that anyone who does not already have sadistic or sociopathic tendencies could be persuaded to do something like that or encourage others to do it. I would love to hear the conversation that gives them justification for the murder of innocents. Unless of course the innocents are portrayed as guilty some how.

[AlfredJPruffock]

Ali I would like to ask you a question although I am not sure that you will be able to answer. What is it that motivates the Islamic extremists? I understand that they have made their own interpretation of a text which other believe promotes peace and tolerance but why hatred of the innocent? The IRA 'fought' in the same way - innocent souls were murdered in the furtherence of their cause - a 'free' Ireland. What do you think that these extremists really want?

My guess would be the same that motivates any extremists, whether they be Christian Zionist Islamic or Communist Fundamentalists, a fanatical belief that THEY are the chosen ones that THEY are correct and your life therefore is inconsequential.

Mind you ,you dont hear a lot about Tao Fundamentalists ....

[Captain Jack]

Ali I would like to ask you a question although I am not sure that you will be able to answer. What is it that motivates the Islamic extremists? I understand that they have made their own interpretation of a text which other believe promotes peace and tolerance but why hatred of the innocent? The IRA 'fought' in the same way - innocent souls were murdered in the furtherence of their cause - a 'free' Ireland. What do you think that these extremists really want?

Don't hold your breath, this thread is a year old.

[John Galt]

Whos Chico? He hasn't even posted here. Im not having a debate. Im not here to convert, just enlightening you "from the horses mouth" about common misconceptions about Islam. If you don't like the thread, dont read it.

Ali I would like to ask you a question although I am not sure that you will be able to answer. What is it that motivates the Islamic extremists? I understand that they have made their own interpretation of a text which other believe promotes peace and tolerance but why hatred of the innocent? The IRA 'fought' in the same way - innocent souls were murdered in the furtherence of their cause - a 'free' Ireland. What do you think that these extremists really want?

[Troll]

****...id give Ann Coulter a couple!

Mailman

She proposed 'muslim free' air flights.... gets my vote

[The Lone Gunman]

-----------------------------

I think Rushdie is a very smart fella. This was written a year ago. I wonder if he would change anything today. I think his points are as insightful and relevant as 05.

A.

Rushdie is undoubtedly a smart fella, but one has to ask what his motive is here.
He knows damn well that Muslims believe the Koran is the revealed word of God and can not be read in any other context.
He knows that what he is asking is effectively for Muslims to reject a cornerstone of their faith.
He knows they can not do it.

Why has he asked the question(s)?

[Angela_D]

Reformation for Islam is overdue. By 500 years. Salman Rushdie article

Should have pasted to this thread.


Sunday Times.

August 11, 2005

Muslims unite! A new Reformation will bring your faith into the modern era
Salman Rushdie

WHEN Sir Iqbal Sacranie, head of the Muslim Council of Britain, admitted that “our own children” had perpetrated the July 7 London bombings, it was the first time in my memory that a British Muslim had accepted his community’s responsibility for outrages committed by its members.

Instead of blaming US foreign policy or “Islamophobia”, Sacranie described the bombings as a “profound challenge” for the Muslim community. However, this is the same Sacranie who, in 1989, said that “Death is perhaps too easy” for the author of The Satanic Verses. Tony Blair’s decision to knight him and treat him as the acceptable face of “moderate”, “traditional” Islam is either a sign of his Government’s penchant for religious appeasement or a demonstration of how limited Mr Blair’s options really are.


Sacranie is a strong advocate of Mr Blair’s much-criticised new religious hatred Bill that will make it harder to criticise religion, and actually expects the new law to outlaw references to Islamic terrorism. He said as recently as January 13: “There is no such thing as an Islamic terrorist. This is deeply offensive. Saying Muslims are terrorists would be covered [ie, banned] by this provision.” Two weeks later his organisation boycotted a Holocaust remembrance ceremony in London, commemorating the liberation of Auschwitz 60 years ago. If Sir Iqbal Sacranie is the best Mr Blair can offer in the way of a good Muslim, we have a problem.

The Sacranie case illustrates the weakness of the Government’s strategy of relying on traditional, but essentially orthodox, Muslims to help to eradicate Islamist radicalism. Traditional Islam is a broad church that certainly includes millions of tolerant, civilised men and women, but also encompasses many whose views on women’s rights are antediluvian, who think of homosexuality as ungodly, who have little time for real freedom of expression, who routinely express anti-Semitic views, and who, in the case of the Muslim diaspora, are — it has to be said — in many ways at odds with the (Christian, Hindu, non-believing or Jewish) cultures among which they live.

In Leeds, from which several of the London bombers came, many traditional Muslims lead lives apart, inward-turned lives of near-segregation from the wider population. From such defensive, separated worlds some youngsters have indefensibly stepped across a moral line and taken up their lethal rucksacks.

The deeper alienations that lead to terrorism may have their roots in these young men’s objections to events in Iraq or elsewhere, but the closed communities of some traditional Western Muslims are places in which young men’s alienations can easily deepen. What is needed is a move beyond tradition — nothing less than a reform movement to bring the core concepts of Islam into the modern age, a Muslim Reformation to combat not only the jihadi ideologues but also the dusty, stifling seminaries of the traditionalists, throwing open the windows of the closed communities to let in much-needed fresh air.

It would be good to see governments and community leaders inside the Muslim world as well as outside it throwing their weight behind this idea, because creating and sustaining such a reform movement will require, above all, a new educational impetus whose results may take a generation to be felt, a new scholarship to replace the literalist diktats and narrow dogmatisms that plague present-day Muslim thinking.

It is high time, for starters, that Muslims were able to study the revelation of their religion as an event inside history, not supernaturally above it.

It should be a matter of intense interest to all Muslims that Islam is the only religion whose birth was recorded historically, its origins uniquely grounded not in legend but in fact. The Koran was revealed at a time of great change in the Arab world, the 7th-century shift from a matriarchal nomadic culture to an urban patriarchal system. Muhammad, as an orphan, personally suffered the difficulties of this transformation, and it is possible to read the Koran as a plea for the old matriarchal values in the new patriarchal world, a conservative plea that became revolutionary because of its appeal to all those whom the new system disenfranchised, the poor, the powerless, and, yes, the orphans.

Muhammad was also a successful merchant and heard, on his travels, the Nestorian Christians’ desert versions of Bible stories which the Koran mirrors closely (Christ, in the Koran, is born in an oasis, under a palm tree). It ought to be fascinating to Muslims everywhere to see how deeply their beloved book is a product of its place and time, and in how many ways it reflects the Prophet’s own experiences.

However, few Muslims have been permitted to study their religious book in this way. The insistence within Islam that the Koranic text is the infallible, uncreated word of God renders analytical scholarly discourse all but impossible. Why would God be influenced by the socioeconomics of 7th-century Arabia, after all? Why would the Messenger’s personal circumstances have anything to do with the Message?

The traditionalists’ refusal of history plays right into the hands of the literalist Islamofascists, allowing them to imprison Islam in their iron certainties and unchanging absolutes. If, however, the Koran were seen as a historical document, then it would be legitimate to reinterpret it to suit the new conditions of successive new ages. Laws made in the 7th century could finally give way to the needs of the 21st. The Islamic Reformation has to begin here, with an acceptance that all ideas, even sacred ones, must adapt to altered realities.

Broad-mindedness is related to tolerance; open-mindedness is the sibling of peace. This is how to take up the “profound challenge” of the bombers. Will Sir Iqbal Sacranie and his ilk agree that Islam must be modernised? That would indeed make them part of the solution. Otherwise, they’re just the “traditional” part of the problem.
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I think Rushdie is a very smart fella. This was written a year ago. I wonder if he would change anything today. I think his points are as insightful and relevant as 05.

A.

[Andyw]

Does she take it up the Gary?

No ! but you do !