[DoggyStyle82]

Shani26 and BlackWatch

You are both right in what you state (for the most part). Shani, I am sure in the Masjid that you attend, you do not find the inflammatory rhetoric of Arab countries and I am sure "Jihad" means a personal struggle to you and that "Islam" means peace more than "submission". I don't see terrorists in my Palestinian neighbors across the street, nor the Pakistanis three doors down. When practiced as its meant and I can infer that you do, its wonderful. I have nothing against Islam as practiced in the U.S. Shani does not have to be covered from head to toe, can drive a car, can vote, can go unaccompanied by a male family member, can marry whom she likes, can be educated, can keep her female genitalia, can practice birth control, etc. If she were a Muslim in Mecca, the home of Islam, she could do none of these things!!! It is Democracy that allows for the best expression of Islam, that makes it a beautiful religion, not the totalitarian theocracies that breed an Islam that corrupts the true meaning of Islam (peace) and Jihad (personal struggle), where sheikhs, mullahs, ayatollahs, Talibans, and Sharia stifle individuality, freedom, and spirituality and create a culture of oppression that America could never match.

But as Love6 struggles with its adherents, so do I. To say that its isolated individuals with extremists ways is not true. Contrary to what Blackwatch states, there is no U.S oppression of Islamic states (with the glaring exception of its support for Israel, Americas 51st state). I don't support any war in Iraq, but Saddam has murdered millions of his own people. The U.S has not intervened in any Arab/Muslim country and oppressed its people. The enslavement of Black Africans is still legal in most Arab countries because under Islam, it is legal to enslave a non-Muslim. There is still a huge slave trade in the Sudan, Mauretania, the Spanish Sahara, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait. Anwar Sadat and the current Saudi ambassador to the U.N are both son's of enslaved Sudanese concubines. Damn near the whole Saudi Arabian World Cup soccer team was children of slaves.

Oh, one last thing Shani, Muhammad was far from a peaceful man and early Islamic conversions were done at swordpoint and not via evangelism.

Please, let no one think that I am attacking anyone's personal spiritual beliefs because I respect good Muslims. There is a distinct difference in Islam in how it is practiced by Shani here and how it is practiced elsewhere.