I'm sorry Rudey but passing judgement on a faith based upon the actions and beliefs of fanatic nutjobs is doing more than a little insulting to the those that practice the faith.

In this case you are judging the Islamic faith, based upon the actions of those who who by their actions violate the tennets of the faith, whether through violence or political exploitation... a comparative would be judging the Christian faith and those thast practice it based on the actions and beliefs of the Westboro Baptist Church - or judging the Jewish faith and those who practice it based in the actions and beliefs of Kahane Chai (Kach) or the JDL.

None of the above mentioned groups should be taken as a reflection upon the whole of the faith that spawned them - nor should any of us be surprised that any faith can be manipulated by those that wish to pervert it for their own ideological/political agenda.

Who is passing judgement on a faith? Don't make such accusations. And again, this is not a small fringe movement. Whole countries are being run with these ideologies. Saudi Arabia is estimated to have spent over $50 billion to spread Wahabism. Madrassas from Pakistan through Morocco are churning out would be terrorists.

And according to jubilance your viewpoint is irrelevant because you are not Muslim.

And getting back to the topic of this thread, it is these religious freaks and terrorists who want to kill Americans over a Newsweek article saying Korans were desecrated and these freaks and terrorists who did die for that cause.

-Rudey
--But I guess you can deny it and just say I'm judging a whole faith.

Its always interesting how those who make offensive comments can never admit to it later.

So Rudey, does your opinion hold true for all religious terrorists, or just Muslims? Do you think its wrong for Christians to do it, or Jews, or Buddhists? I'm just wondering if you're anti-Muslim or anti-violence.

I'm anti-violence, but you're doing the exact same thing the terrorists are: blaming the entire group for the actions of a few.

It's not a few and yes I am against all religious terrorists. I think most people are against religious terrorists of any kind. I don't understand what makes someone want to intentionally hurt an innocent civilian and I think common human nature probably makes that common in most people.

But for someone who thinks my thoughts are irrelevant because I'm not Muslim, you sure keep caring about my thoughts enough to post on them. And now you allege offensive comments without anything to back them up - so they were irrelevant but offensive?

Anyhoo, here is a thread on the Growth of Radical Islam: http://www.greekchat.com/gcforums/sh...fundamentalism

In this thread, I think we can all agree that if any Korans were desecrated it is disrespectful and a shame and that we all reject killing in the name of religion and books like the Koran - or at least I hope we can all agree to that.

-Rudey

You can have all the opinions you want.

Your comments on Islam as a religion - irrelevant to me. I didn't ask you about my religion, I asked you about terrorists.

Its pretty damn rude to ASSume folks who are Muslims don't know what toilets are, and don't have them.

You can come back with whatever snappy comebacks you want, but at the end of the day, you haven't focused on my main point:ITS NOT RIGHT TO STEREOTYPE ALL BASED UPON THE ACTIONS OF A MINORITY!

You just pointed out that 1/4 of the world's population is Muslim;therefore, we can't ALL be terrorists. So stop insinuating that we are!

Umm I've been to the middle east. Large chunks of the areas do not have sewage systems with toilets. It's pretty damn rude and wrong for you to ASSume you know something when you don't. Now this is an issue of stereotyping people to not have toilets when they don't and that as a non-Muslim my thoughts are irrelevant?

Funny you are as Yoda would say.

But if you do support Muslims who did kill all in the name of a book, I accept that you have your viewpoint.

Nobody said you are all terrorists. Stop making accusations. Read and comprehend. Too bad that YOU were not taught basic reading skills and YOU do not reflect well on reading skills for Muslims but I won't stereotype anything regarding those skills.

-Rudey

Having read through all the posts quite a few times, I don't think that has been insinuated.

Quite so. But I think that the perception that many people have -- rightly or wrongly -- is that when the radical idealogical minority engage in killing innocent people, there doesn't seem to be much outrage from the larger community. The perception -- again rightly or wrongly -- is that reflected by the Thomas Friedman NYT op-ed piece quoted earlier in this thread:

Yet these mass murders - this desecration and dismemberment of real Muslims by other Muslims - have not prompted a single protest march anywhere in the Muslim world. And I have not read of a single fatwa issued by any Muslim cleric outside Iraq condemning these indiscriminate mass murders of Iraqi Shiites and Kurds by these jihadist suicide bombers, many of whom, according to a Washington Post report, are coming from Saudi Arabia.

I recognize that there is no central Islamic authority. Nevertheless, I think part of the issue reflected here is the seeming, relative lack of public denunciation of terrorist acts.

And for the record, I would express the same concern in a Christian context. I have long been concerned about how the Christian community -- particularly the Catholics, Presbyterians and Anglicans -- have or have not publically condemned the actions of some in (and out of) Northern Ireland. I was glad when the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, of which the the Dutch Reformed Church of South Africa was a member, denounced the teaching of apartheid as heretical and essentially withdrew communion from the South African church until it repudiated that teaching.

While I mean in no way to impute guilt to anyone but the guilty, the fact is that there is a real perception -- one more time, whether that perception is accurate or inaccurate -- that the larger Islamic community's denunciation of and actions to counter those groups that pervert Islamic teaching is tepid at best.

That's the thing thought - perception.

What we see here in North America or the "West" is different from what others see - and more importantly how we see things differs.

One major problem I have with this discussion is the problem of sources and perception - face it a public denouncation of violence by 1000 people isn't going to get the same print or air-time that 1000 people supporting the violence; more over aspects of violent protests may be highlighted while ignoring a larger or more complex picture - in order to make the story "concise".

A fine example would have been the protests in Afghanistan - for the most part I noticed that the US networks (such as CNN or FOX) reporting left the impression that the protests where solely about allegations of the Qu'ran being desecrated: "Muslims protest desecration of Qu'ran"- which was only part of the story... in this case the CBC & BBC had being convering the protests for the preceeding week, during which the anti-government/anti-occupation/anti-corruption/anti-abuse nature was discussed - the allegations of desecration only added a further fuel to the fire. In the end I'd assume that most in the US thought the protests focused solely on the Qu'ran issue, without realizing there was much more to the violence. So in the end the perception that the unifying thread behind the story was "Muslims protesting desecration of Qu'ran"... and not "Afghans protest government corruption/un-employment/religious reforms/seccular reforms/prisoner abuse/prisoner killings/drug trafficing/renewed Taliban violence/or and end to occuption".

Admittedly when I started this thread I should have posted the entire article in the hopes more would have read it through - and that more would have seen that it was about more than the allegations of the desecration of the Qu'ran... and admittedly I should have lead the topic a little better by making it about all the allegations of physical or religous abuses...

I had hoped that this thread would have re-ignited the debate over the US Administration's policies regarding Gitmo and Afghanistan; the conections between Abu Gharib-Afghanistan-Gitmo; and the response to these allegations and/or charges - well other than Bush's dismissive comments that any allegations of abuse are "absurd" or the people "hate America":rolleyes: (fuuny but didn't they say the samew about Abu Gharib?)

Again, there were people calling for American deaths because of what happened to the Koran, ultimately no less than a book.

And while there were protests in Afghanistan over many things, there were quite a few protests where people died solely over this one thing.

But as the left-wing Thomas Friedman pointed out, the alleged story over putting a Koran on a toilet got mass protests but terrorist killings in Iraq or the destruction of Darfur get no mass coverage from Muslims around the world. That is more than sad; it's shameful.

-Rudey

They where calling for the deaths before the Newsweek story broke... the allegations just gave them more to be upset about.



I wouldn't put it down to "solely" this one thing - major yes, but not "sole". For the most part they where protesting vilently against US polices - whether it involved Gitmo, torture in Afghanistan, or the much despised heavy-handed tactics in hunting the Taliban.

Left-wing doesn't mean that they can't be wrong ;)

Al Jazerra gives more air time to Iraq in general that "Western" sources - whether it is the violence, the re-construction, or 'people' stories - the network is actually quite informative once you get used to their particular style & slant.

Solely as in sole protests across the Muslim world, not just Afghanistan, dedicated to this and then coupled with the usual "I hate America" vitriol.

And there still aren't major Muslim protests around the world against the murders and terrorist actions in Iraq (there are against Americans being there) - none in Al Jazeera and none in the New York Times. In fact, if you check out MEMRI which provides Arabic news interpretations, you won't see anything. It's not an issue of coverage.

-Rudey