More Muslim Marvelousnous

[Ibn_Warraq]

@casdave

You see, this is wrong on several levels and betrays the sickness within Islam.

I’m not sure what makes you think that I somehow am an example of “the sickness within Islam” but I’m happy to talk to someone who is so familiar with the faith that they’re happy to proclaim that it has “a sickness” within it.

Since you think there’s a “sickness” within Islam, I assume you also feel the same towards Judaism or Christianity, otherwise my assumption that you’re familiar with all three religions is grossly mistaken.

Adultery is a serious crime - in books written hundreds if not thousands of years ago, but yet it does not allow for the consideration of the human relationship whereby marriages fail, and ebb and flow, long ago we decided that although adultery is not pleasant, it is not a crime.

Umm… yes, that’s true of the Bible and the Quran. That was the point of my post.

All of the Abrahamic religions have strict prohibitions on it and until modern times, enforced extremely harsh penalties on those that violated the taboo.

Unfortunately, currently there are more Muslims living in backward parts of the world where Islam has not been hobbled the way Christianity and Judaism in the West has been.

Nevertheless, the number of Muslim countries where adultery is a crime is extremely small. It’s only about six or seven out of around sixty countries where most of the population is Muslim, and the number where it is a capital crime is even smaller. Also, adultery is still a crime in South Korea and the Philippines where the populace is overwhelmingly Christian, Taiwan, where the populace is mainly Buddhist, and India, where the populace is overwhelmingly Hindu.

It’s also worth noting that where Sharia is practiced, while the punishment for adultery is extremely barbaric, since it requires four witnesses it’s extremely difficult to prove.

you will also note that those same nations would regards lashes as primative uncivilised savagery, yet here is a poster stating that Islam is at least as just as Chrisitanity because although the latter used to advocate execution - and no longer does this in practice - Islam is all the better because the whip is so much more humane, so humane in fact that this beastly barberous atrocity is still carried on through the so-called judicial system that the sickness of Islam calls Shaira law.

Umm… for starters Sharia law is practiced to varying degrees in numerous countries where women are neither whipped nor executed for adultery.

What does and doesn’t constitute Sharia law is a very fluid concept and varies dramatically depending on which country you’re in.

Second, yes, when it comes to adultery Christian tradition is as harsh as Islamic tradition.

The Bible condemns adultery and says the penalty for it is death and Christian theologians such as St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas have repeatedly insisted that this was the case.

Why is Islam so frightened about the sexuality of humans? Why is it especially worried about the freedom of women? Islam is a backward religion, that produces a poisoned tree from which the evils of extremism are the natural fruit.

Actually, when it comes to sex Christianity is far more hostile to sexuality and cloaks sex with a sense of shame that Islam most certainly doesn’t.

Also, the idea that it’s more hostile to the freedom of women than Christianity or Judaism is laughable. In fact, during the Ottoman Empire, one of the objections many Jews and Christians had was that their women would convert to Islam when they wanted to get divorced because Islam gave women far more rights when it came to divorce then either Judaism or Christianity. Jewish women, for example, couldn’t get divorced without their husband’s permission and Christian women either couldn’t get divorced or couldn’t get the equitable division in divorce that Muslim women could get.

Female genital mutilation - it may not be in the good book, but again it shows the sickness of Islam, because there are many muslim advocates of this barbaric practice, which is solely about the ownership through marriage of one human being by another, and it is all centerd around Islam, the interpreted word, or practice, the effects and consequencies are real enough.

I agree that female genital mutilation is appalling and it’s not practiced in most Muslim countries, including such “moderate” countries as Iran.

Now, since you admit that even though it pre-dates Islam, is not mentioned in the Quran or the ahadith that because it is practiced by Muslims it is a testament to how “sick” Islam is then I’m sure you’ll agree then that Christianity is “sick” because it is widely practiced by Christians in Egypt.

Advocating the death of apostates, primitive savagery and nothing more, this is saying that God is not big enough to look after his own, and man must intervene by murdering those who have the temerity to use their own minds and make their own decisions - Islam is sick.

I agree that death penalty for apostates is disgusting but it is advocated as strongly within the Bible and by, until recently, most Christian theologians.

Are you claiming that Christianity is “sick” because of Biblical injunctions against it.

Moreover, while it’s wrong for apostasy to be a capital crime in any country, you can count the countries its a capital crime on one hand out of around sixty Islamic countries.

You seem to make the same mistake of virtually everyone of judging Islam solely by the few countries where apostasy is a crime.

Defending the sickness of Islam as practiced today by mentioning the burning of witches by another bunch of lunatics is no defence at all, how on earth can the behviour of other extremists be tortuously used to justify the excesses of another sick group of human abusers?

Well, if you’re going to complain about “the sickness of Islam” due to one horrible case in Bangladesh then you should also complain about “the sickness of Christianity” due to similar atrocities committed by Christians.

You often hear advocates of Islam mention the inherant humanity in their belief system, perhaps there is some, but its the compassion of the humane abattoir.

Like the other Abrahamic religions Islam can inspire great acts of humanity or horrible acts of terror.

[Ibn_Warraq]

@Capitaine_Zombie

A schism in Islam? I doubt that could happen, the concept doesnt translate in Arabic.

Is it an obligation to be quasi illiterate to be a Muslim hater?

Agreed. Moreover, if you’re major concern is to change Muslim attitudes towards adultery and apostasy I don’t see why you’d want something like the Protestant Reformation for them since Martin Luther was hardly cool with either adulterers or heretics.

What happened with Europe was events and philosophies unconnected with Christian theology wound up forcing Christians to abandon many of their beliefs, what has been referred to as the enlightenment. Essentially secular forces managed to defang Christianity.

Unfortunately the forces throughout the Islamic world that one might compare to the secularists of the Enlightenment, such as Nasser, the Ba’athists, and the Shah have been brutal and repressive and pushed people into the arms of the radicals.

[I_am_the_customer_dammit]

and so it would seem the muslims are poised to attempt the takeover of the world - if only clinton would have wiped out bin laden when he had the chance, what a different world this would be!

[AK84]

Yeah crimes have never happened in the rest of the fucking world. No one infucking Austria for instance has ever failed to notice that a pillar of the community is busy fucking his own daughter for 40 fucking years.

Or in the US either.

You blind, racist, bigoted asshole. Did you even fucking read the fucking report. Or itsfollow up.. The assholes have been arrested. A case has been resgistered against them.

Crimes happen all over the fucking world. Yet only when one happens in a muslim country is the crime for some reason the fault of the entire fucking muslim world.

Well two can play at that game shitface. Austrians are all daughter fucking pedos and US kidnapping ones while every mother in England and Waleslets boyfriends abuse her sons.

[Capitaine_Zombie]

@John_Mace

Captain Zombie: Not to be insulting or anything, but I really don’t know who you are or recall your posting history. But if you have a fever, I would definitely go see your doctor.

Oh dismiss me now, after that wondeful time at the Dallas airport hotel. Momma warned me about men like you.

[casdave]

Ibm

You still don’t get it, its an almost wilful blindness to the flaws of Islam.

I am not discussing any religion beyond Islam, there is enough savagry and violence within that ‘moral’ code to satisfy the debate in one thread, and there is plenty of problems in other religions to fill out other threads, comparisons between the crimes between religions does not form any sort of justification, I am sure that the charitable aspects of Islam are at least as great, and perhaps more than those of other religions, that misses the point entirely.

As far as I am aware, I have just one life to try get it right, as does everyone else, and Islam destroys and currupts many lives through sexual slavery of women, through the destruction of life itself, through the denial of freedom of thought and freedom of choice.That makes it evil.

Islam is not just the Q’ran, nor is it the Hadith, just as Christianity is not just a bible. Islam is a set of social practices and cultural beliefs, it informs the lives of those who live under its influence, it really does not matter if certain things that are done in the name of Islam are actually Islamic or not, this IS Islam.Christmas trees and baubles are not in the bible, nor are snow covered scenes on Christmas cards, but they are inextricably linked to Christianity.

The brutality that you claim only takes place in backwards muslim nations (Wahabbism for anyone? Saudi isn’t exactly backward) is still part of Islam, because its the social practices that is the truth of Islam, Islam is everything that the culture and values of those societies that hold it as important, put it this way, they use Islam, or Islam uses them to carry out the same nasty acts of mutilation and violence - it actually does not matter, the two are so linked it is not possible to show where the the boundary between Islam and culture begins and ends - the two are the same thing.

We all have families with relatives that we would rather not know, Islam is very much like that, except that the way Islam works is to try shift its rule across national and cultural limits and imposes itself upon the innocent.In that way its very like the popery of the 16th Century. It also should be said that Islam behaves very much as if this is the 16th Century too - basicly Islam is around 500 years behind the real world.

Unfortunately, currently there are more Muslims living in backward parts of the world where Islam has not been hobbled the way Christianity and Judaism in the West has been.

Do you serioulsy understand what you are saying here? I think you probably do not, because this looks like you are saying that some other force has compelled both these other religions to behave in a civilised manner - personally my view is that for the most part, the adherants of these religions largely grew up and realised the inhumanity of prevous behaviours, something that Islam has so signally failed to do in many parts of the world, and this is not in little pockets of Islam either- we are talking of entire nations of tens, if not hundreds of millons.

It does not matter what the bible says about adultery, because this has not been practised for centuries, in effect it is an unpleasant historical footnote with no relevance to the Christian of today, it is therefore no longer part of Christianity, unlike Islam. What is stated as a crime and on the national statute books of nations is one thing, but the truth is that at a social level, adultuery in many of those Islamic nations is an extremely dangerous thing and will get you murdered, with only the most cursory of invesitgations - if any at all.The rule of statute law does not impinge even slightly on the lives of many muslims, the only rule they know is that of Islam, whether they want it or not.Its one thing to have laws in the books of a country, but its very much a differant thing to see those rules effectively enforced.

The comments about Ottoman practices with Jews and Christians are not relevant in the slightest, the Ottoman empire does not exist, and is a world of the past, we are talking of todays atrocities, not trying to defend them with examples of historical irrelevance.

Moreover, while it’s wrong for apostasy to be a capital crime in any country, you can count the countries its a capital crime on one hand out of around sixty Islamic countries.

That sounds like a lot of Islamic countries to me, and how many countries that are not Muslim is apostasy not a crime, all the others?. This is meaningless anyway, because its not what the state imposes, its what Islam imposes through its practices at the level of communities.

Crowmanyclouds

Replacing Western “Common Law” with Sharia law doesn’t sound all that great to me, to say the least. But, if two parties agree to settle a (presumably civil) legal dispute using Halakha or Sharia or any other framework, and that settlement doesn’t violate the basic legal rights of the parties under the Common Law without the parties voluntary agreeing to it (again presumably, within reason (probably on a case by case basis, until a body of caselaw is established)

From a reasonable perspective this might sound ok, but actually its not, its actually appeasement, and this just does not work.Its creeping Islamicisation, we would be in danger of what happenS in Islamic states, where there is state law, and then there is religious law, where state law is usurped by religious lunatics. It represents a power to control, and it will certainly be abused, becuase Islam is all about control over the lives of others, and there is just no way I would trust any religiously informed grouping to act fairly, or even in a manner that might be contrary to their own outlook.

My main objection to having ‘petty’(as in small) Sharia is easy though, you write as if there is a choice, but the glue that holds society together is much more powerful than personal choice.Settling disputs should only be done on the rule of law, there must never ever be any choice in that matter. If you have been brought up in a world of Islamic tradition in a westernised society, you actually don’t even have your own opinions, much less choice - its the excercising of choice that has led to the murder of young muslims who try to live their own lives - peer pressure soon erodes choice and agreement.This is why you can never have Sharia informed quasi-legal systems in a secular sociaty.

You cannot have freedom in degrees, you have it or you do not.

[NCDane]

@Leaper

One thing I’d like to ask ncdane, magellan and those who agree with them: to clarify, you seem to think that Islam, as a religion, is inherently violent/evil/whatever adjective you wish to use. So what? What do we, or can we, do about it? How do we treat countries whose majorities practice it? How do we (as citizens or as institutions, whether government or law enforcement based) treat those who practice it? In a perfect world, how would you LIKE things to be done?

It’s looking more and more like the pre-WW2 colonial regimes,
imperfect though they were, were the best government most
Muslims ever had.

In an imaginary perfect world we would be able to disarm them
without great loss of life or treasure. Then we would remove their
right to self-government and rule over them by decree until the
worst of their awful religion could be exorcised, even if were to
take centuries.

Realistically, that is not likely to take place. What is taking place
is a world in the balance with the worst of the Muslim world surely
not dwindling in strength, and perhaps growing ominously.

The least we can do is follow the lead of PMs Cameron and Merkel,
and adopt a no-nonsense non-multicultural attitude toward that
part of society where the potential problem resides.

Discriminatory immigration policy is another possible practical step,
although at least in the US there would be a titanic legal battle over it.

That is all I can think of for now.

[NCDane]

@Capitaine_Zombie

A schism in Islam? I doubt that could happen, the concept doesnt translate in Arabic…

Google “Sunni” and “Shia”.

There are also other smaller, not always friendly sects as well.

[Carmady]

I don’t care if half or more of the world’s Muslims want to kill apostates and adulterers.

I don’t care if the majority of the Islamic world holds beliefs and performs actions that would immediately be seen as shockingly evil if held or done by anyone else.

I don’t care if Islam is the tool through which this evil is brought to fruition around the world.

None of that matters, for one obvious reason. So obvious, I can’t believe it hasn’t been brought up yet: HITLER WAS NOT A MUSLIM.

What was he? I don’t know. But whatever it was, that is what we need to do something about.

[Capitaine_Zombie]

@NCDane

Google “Sunni” and “Shia”.

There are also other smaller, not always friendly sects as well.

I see your grasp of irony is on par with your knowledge of things Muslim.

[BigT]

Why is this so complicated? Just take the data. Take the number of Christians who do these filthy things versus the number of atheists versus the number of Muslims, versus… If there is more Muslim barbarism than the others, then, by definition, Islam is more barbaric. You guys make it sound like this is some weird manner of opinion.

And, I would guess the OP has more on his side, just based on the number of backwards countries that are officially Muslim, but maybe I’m wrong. But I expect someone to actually offer evidence, rather than just saying I’m a bigot because I disagree with you.

(And, yes, I’m fully aware of the irony of me saying that.)

[NCDane]

@Capitaine_Zombie

I see your grasp of irony

Competently rendered irony I have no problem with.

@Capitaine_Zombie

is on par with your knowledge of things Muslim.

Maybe you can help educate me, but I doubt it. It doesn’t
look like you have it in you to contribute anything except
substandard, Junior High School-caliber one-liners.

[Capitaine_Zombie]

@NCDane

Maybe you can help educate me, but I doubt it. It doesn’t
look like you have it in you to contribute anything except
substandard, Junior High School-caliber one-liners.

No, you are.

[Ibn_Warraq]

@magellan01

Please point to the bible passage that says that. Which testament? Which passage? Then point me to instances of a modern-day Christians executing adulterers.

Are you saying you honestly don’t think the Bible condemns adultery or requires the death penalty for adultery?

Reread Deuteronomy 22:22, Leviticus 20:10, and Proverbs 6:32.

Now, perhaps you’re going to argue that because of Jesus you can ignore all the laws of the Old Testament, but that certainly wasn’t what Jesus felt. As he said in Matthew 5:17-18.

"Do not think that I [Jesus] have come to abolish the Law (the Old Testament) or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke or a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law (the Old Testament) until everything is accomplished.

He makes it very clear that they need to follow ever “jot and tittle of the law(meaning the law of the OT)”(another translation of the same passage.

Now, earlier you insisted that Christianity doesn’t argue that adultery should be a capitol offense because of John 8:1-11, but you seem to have misunderstood the point of that passage. “The Pharisees and the teachers of the law” had brought this adulteress before Jesus and were challenging him to say she had to be stoned. Jesus then came up with a reason not to with the famous phrase “let he who is without sin cast the first stone”.

Now, the reason Jesus did this was because as the passage tells us, “they were using this question as a trap” and Jesus refused to do so because if he’d condemned her to be stoned to death he would have been a hypocrite because at that time the people in charge were regularly breaking the law.

As he said "“Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples: ‘The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. So you must obey them and do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach.'”(Matthew 23:1-3).

Had Jesus actually said it was wrong to punish people for adultery then Christians would not have over the centuries executed countless numbers of people for adultery and theologians such as Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine wouldn’t have defended this.

Christians in Europe didn’t stop executing people for adultery because they suddenly found some passage in the Bible they hadn’t noticed but because secular philosophies defanged them. That’s also why European Muslims in Bosnia, Albania, and Turkey don’t believe that adulterers should be executed.

Do you think that the Quran and the New Testament are equally doctrines of peace? If we had to follow one book to the letter, which one wold you choose?

I’m sorry that’s an extremely silly question. For starters, if you read more than just the Gospels you’ll notice the New Testament can be quite fiery towards what is to happen to people who don’t accept Jesus. If you read Revelations you’ll notice that Jesus is supposed to come back and commit genocide and mass murder on a grand scale against all non-Christians and those who don’t accept him into their hearts on a scale that makes Hitler look like a boy scout.

Beyond that, why don’t you say “the Bible” instead of “the New Testament”.

I don’t know what Church you go to. But every church I know of doesn’t contain copies of “The New Testament” but instead has the Bible and most Christian Bibles sell various different translations of the Bible not various translations of the New Testament.

It’s patently obvious to us all that you didn’t say “The Bible” because you knew that the Old Testament, if anything, contains far more fiery, xenophobic, and extreme rhetoric than the Quran, though the New Testament contains a fair amount of bigoted garbage as well.

I agree that culture plays a big role, but what you seem to overlook is that Islam is a huge part of these cultures. In many instances it’s almost inseparable.

Well, then instead of comparing apple to oranges by squealing about how come the Muslims in Bangladesh aren’t more like Americans, compare Muslims and Christians Sub-Saharran Africa and the Middle East to each other.

For example, you’ll notice that female genital mutilation is practiced by large numbers of Christians in Egypt yet nobody whines about Christianity somehow “tolerating” it or that it is “associated with Christianity”.

As for Apostasy and adultery, I suspect if you spoke with Christian Arabs in the Levant area and Egypt, the responses you’d get wouldn’t be much different. I know in Egypt that whenever someone converts to Islam from Christianity they are immediately disowned by the family. I’ve never heard of an “ex-Christian” being murdered, but that probably has more to do with the Egyptian government making it clear that they would execute anyone who murdered “ex-Christians” rather than tolerance for this.

[Ibn_Warraq]

@flickster

I don’t profess to know the magic solution, but feel very confident that what we have been doing is not right. Ignoring the atrocities against women while attacking those that do have the courage to speak out against it is not the answer.

These sectors of Islam deserve nothing but the full scorn of all civilized society. Instead, they get quasi acceptance by the PC crowd who may not support the acts of barbarism themselves but value their ability “look the other way” more than they do the poor victims of these savages. This quasi acceptance does nothing but embolden their actions even more.

I’m sorry, but what planet do you live on where people don’t condemn atrocities committed against women by Muslims.

You’ll notice this abortion of a thread started because of a crime people have been arrested for when as AK has pointed out, such crimes have also been committed by non-Muslims in Austria, the UK, and countless other countries.

Beyond that, compare the amount of ink that’s been skilled detailing the abuse of women in the ME, Pakistan, and Afghanistan compared to the abuse women face in the Christian parts of Africa.

But in many of these troubled & oppresive countries, Islam government and Islam religion is all one and the same

What are you talking about? That’s true in Iran and too a lesser extent Saudi Arabia, but that’s hardly the norm.

Most Islamic countries are ruled by “secular” dictators.

[wmfellows]

[quote=“BigT, post:151, topic:570243”]

Why is this so complicated? Just take the data. Take the number of Christians who do these filthy things versus the number of atheists versus the number of Muslims, versus… If there is more Muslim barbarism than the others, then, by definition, Islam is more barbaric. You guys make it sound like this is some weird manner of opinion.[/qote]

No by definition Muslim countries are more barbaric. Deriving a conclusion about Islam would require comparing like countries (by income and social structure) and having enough data observations (30+) to have some confidence it was not merely a momentary quirk.

@Ibn_Warraq

I’m sorry, but what planet do you live on where people don’t condemn atrocities committed against women by Muslims.

You’ll notice this abortion of a thread started because of a crime people have been arrested for when as AK has pointed out, such crimes have also been committed by non-Muslims in Austria, the UK, and countless other countries.

Beyond that, compare the amount of ink that’s been skilled detailing the abuse of women in the ME, Pakistan, and Afghanistan compared to the abuse women face in the Christian parts of Africa.

Quite, quite.

And there’s no shortage. But my conclusion is relative to poor countries.

[casdave]

I do not give one fishes tit about what some ancient book states, these practices have died out in Christianity.

The differance here is that significant numbers of Muslims also do not seem to give much credance to the Q’ran, given that they behave in a barberous manner that is not sanctioned by it, and yet this reprehensible behaviour is not unusual among those of the Islamic persuasion.You cannot justify the crimes of Islam by comparing them to the crimes of Christianity, you are just comparing one lot of criminals with another lot, instead of comparing either with true humanity.

They do use the Q’ran though as some justification for being stone age primitives, and that is what makes Islam such a dangerous code.

You still do not get it, and neither do many other muslims, you cannot even begin to attempt to defend these pathetic little power games of control and evil by somehow saying ’ well others used to do it worse than Islam’. What sort of argument is that?

Who actually gives a shit about the Pharisees, or the scribes or some other long dead bunch of shepherding nomads of around 2000 years ago, it isn’t relevant and has not been so for at least half a millenia.

I do not care about Matthew, Mark, Luke, or any other misogynistic has been, with views that are only relevant for a society over two thousand years old, I don’t actually care what they said, or what they wrote, and you will find that in practice, few Christians let it inform their lives to the extent of raping, killing or harming others, now as for Islam, now thats very differant, the nutters carefully use things taken out of context, and things that are downright wrong, or even, they simply invent their own justifications - but its the culture of Islam that informs them.

Why is it that these senior muslim clerics, the ones that provide support and funds for suicide bombers never seem to die young? They are pretty keen on their followers dying young though aren’t they? You don’t get many old matryrs out of Islam, wonder why that should be, perhaps its because they use the lives of their naiive young followers to reinforce their own power, just once I would like to see one of these elderly hate filled depraved terror mongers out their in a many pocketed jacket full of explosives, seems to me that the mullahs and Islamic leaders don’t mind others having to die for their beliefs.

[elucidator]

We killed somewhere north of one hundred thousand people for George and Dicks Excellent Military Adventure. We killed them for nothing, they were no threat to us, they couldn’t have threatened us if they had wanted to. We killed them because the man they were afraid of refused to surrender what he didn’t have in the first place.

That isn’t savagery? That isn’t barbarism, slaughtering thousands upon thousands of innocent people, for nothing? Since when is GeeDubya’s rather tepid Methodism a branch of Islam? Were you here, in the Pit, when the first bombs of “Shock and Awe” landed on Baghdad? Wailing, moaning, tearing your hair over the savagery of our government. Some of us were, you one of them? Have you forgotten, then, is it lost in the mists of time?

You remind me of Tuli Kupferberg’s ultra-short story.

It seems there was a stockpile of hydrogen bombs, and one was bitterly morose and depressed. His fellow H-bombs inquired, what was the problem?

“I want to be a bullet”, it responded.

“A bullet! A bullet? Why? You are a thirty-megaton hydrogen bomb, you can bust a whole city wide open in a nanosecond, why would you want to be something so puny as a bullet?”

“I miss the personal touch.”

Is that it? The personal touch marks the difference between civilization and barbarism? Murder a child with a whip, you are a monster, murder…what? ten thousand? twenty thousand?..children, and you are civilized? Ripping their little bodies with shrapnel, burn them, crush them beneath collapsed buildings, this is civilization?

Well, of course, they are savages, aren’t they? They aren’t like us, they have no respect for human life, like we do. They murder from emotion and misguided religion, we have no such taint. Its nothing personal, its just business.

When Jesus said “Suffer the little children to come unto me”, he wasn’t suggesting hurrying them along to eternal peace by way of shrapnel. Pretty sure about that, but maybe you went to a different Sunday School than I did.

You are a hate-monger, a cheerleader for the Grim Reaper. But you are civilized about it.

[casdave]

The wrongs of Bush do not mitigate the effects of Islamic social practices, which include denial of the right to choose another, or indeed no, religion.

The barberism of the Taliban was also commented upon many times in this forum, whilst the invasion of Iraq is a crime against humainty, in my opinion this had little to do with the barbaric practices of those fine upstanding examples of religious tolerance.

Not once has Bush been nemtioned in this thread, you may even believe that is an omission, however it isn’t - because the threat of death for adultery, or apostasy are still tenets of Islam, Wahabbism is alive and well, female repression is doing just nicely thankyouverymuch in Islamic theocratic circles.

Had the evil of Bush never existed, this would still be true, although less world terrorism would have been a very good thing too, Rumsfeld Pearle et al.

he wrongs of the one do not cancel out the wrongs of another, its possible to hate Bush and all he stands for and still condemn the barbarity of the practices of Islam

[kaylasdad99]

IIRC, the Taliban was pretty firmly against men paying too much attention to how their hair was cut and their beards trimmed. So talking about their (the Taliban’s) barberism kinda doesn’t compute.