I know. Spiny Norman is still out there . . . somewhere . . .
Yes you probably are. You didnt notice it but your user name is a Muslim name, you let your guard slip, I can see past all your oriental veiling and wailing. I’m quite knowledgable on Islam since I read the Koran (well, I read many sites that read it so I’m quite on the page). I know for example you lie all the time about what you’re doing on our lands, but that if I bring a slice of pork near you, you will crack up and spill the beans. Electocuting your testicles will work as well.
Well, Khamenei does command a fairly large army which did a really good job fighting against Iraq for eight years.
As to how big it is, you’ll have to be more specific. Are you talking merely about Army or the Islamic Republic or are you also including the armed forces of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution and the Basij?
The answer could vary pretty dramatically from about 500,000 soldiers to several million depending on who you believe at that point.
There is no claim that he is. He is, by virtue of his role as PM when he was, a pretty good expert on the what happens when the Islamic world comes into contact and clashes with cultures of The West.
True, the problem is the clash. But isn’t it a bit like this excuse:
“But, Officer, all I did was shoot the gun. He got in the way of the bullet.”
Another way to look at it is that Iran could not defeat in eight years and a million casualties an enemy that a fraction of the Allied forces beat in five weeks.
What a very clever post. As usual, you’re either being spectacularly dense and missing my point or else deliberately pretending that you didn’t understand my point. Let me try to spell things out very clearly and maybe this time you’ll actually address what I’m saying.
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The thesis of this thread is that you’ve a found a brief quote from Tony Blair which appears somewhat similiar to your own views about Muslims. In your own mind, this apparently somehow makes your own views about Muslims legitimate.
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In order for this reasoning to make sense, Tony Blair would have to be a trustworthy, legitimate source of judgements.
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But Tony Blair is not trustworthy. Examples are plentiful, but certainly the largest one is the war in Iraq. While media jokesters portrayed him as Dubya’s lapdog in that regard, the facts show that Blair was even more gung-ho about war than Dubya. Tony Blair deliberately told many enormous lies about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and ties to Al Queda. Tony Blair knew that Saddam had no WMDs and no significant ties to Al Queda. He chose to lies about these things in order to start a war that cost over a million lives and is still going on.
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Therefore, even if Tony Blair agreed with your anti-Muslim prejudices, that would not validate those prejudices. In fact, it would seem a further reason for rejecting those prejudices.
Is that clear? Do you now understand my argument, or would you like for me to explicate it at even greater length?
Your analogy fails. The gun is merely an inanimate object employed by a person.
The clash of cultures has been going on for decades and every time it has been suppressed in one form, it has resurrected in another. Noting that al Qaida has exploited that clash for its own ends–which are religious–makes sense. Pretending, as Valteron does and as he attributes incorrectly to Blair, that it is the religion, itself, that is the problem, when the problem would continue even if the religion was removed from the equation is foolish.
Well, I would argue that Iran won since they repelled the invaders, despite the assistance Saddam received from the West, but I was hardly trying to argue that Iran is a military threat to the West and ridiculed Valerton’s earlier suggestion that they were.
Frankly, I’m surprised all the people pissing in their pants over Iran don’t see to have any concerns about Pakistan which is far, far more unstable than Iran, actually has nuclear weapons, and has gotten into several wars with another nuclear power, India.
For too many people in the West, Pakistan is our religious loon while Iran is an independent religious loon.
Dude, it’s Blv. Barbès. There *are *no non-Muslim French or businesses on that street :p.
It has a lot to do with Iran being a largely Shia nation, and therefore it has a powerful natural sympathy for Al Queda’s Wahhabist roots. given the Wahhabist’s great affection and respect for Shia traditions and viewpoints. Rather like the Klan’s deep affection for Catholicism.
By the way, by sheer accident, I am familiar with the source of your username. You might take a moment to clarify that. Merely a suggestion, mind you.
Not since 1971 though (outside of admittedly sometimes large scale skirmishes in Kashmir).
If you think Iran is morestable then Pakistan you have no idea of the region or Iran.
You do a regular religious census of that street and all its inhabitants, do you? And you also verify every Friday that no cars or non-Muslim pedestrians have ever been denied access during this illegal blocking of a street for religious worship? I assume that you have people posted at both ends of this open-air street mosque to check this out, since you could not verify this alone? If that is true then I apologize for having said that non-Muslims are denied access to the street during its occupation for religious purposes.
Nice job ignoring all the posts pointing out that you’re wrong about… well, everything, and responding to the tongue-in-cheek one.
I’m sorry, but you think the Pakistani government is more stable than Iran’s?
Iran has had two leaders since the fall of the Shah whereas Pakistan has been through several different governments, has had political leaders exiled and later executed, had a military coup detat followed by several years of a military dictatorship.
Furthermore, the government of Pakistan doesn’t even have control of the whole country having been effectively forced to cede control of parts of it to the Taliban and it currently has several million refugees, some from Afghanistan, but many also internal.
Sorry, but if you think that Khamenei is in greater danger of falling or has less control of his country then whatever Pakistan calls it’s government, then you’re the one who’s knowledge and understanding of the region and Iran is lacking.
I ignore many of the posts simply because refuting them as they would need to be would be a waste of an entire day or week. Right now I am reading a very interesting book, Paris 1919 (published under the title The Peacemakers in Britain), and I am really getting into it. So I would really rather read than rehash the same points over and over and over.
Take one small example. Ibn Warraq (whose nick is obviously based on THE Ibn Warraq, author of Why I am not a Muslim).
OUR Ibn Warraq uses the old relativist argument. There is homophobia in Islam? Well, there is some in Christianity too, so (and I have never been able to follow the logic of this argument) the homophobia in Islam somehow becomes acceptable.
This makes as much sense as saying there were racists in the Democratic Party under FDR, so we can’t criticize racism in the Nazi party.
The point he conveniently misses, of course, is that, exceptions notwithstanding, the west is light years ahead of the Islamic world in terms of gay rights. Now, I have asked him to look at the map of LGBT rights by country and territory in Wikipedia, but he just brushes it off as unreliable. But one look at that map will show him that GLBT rights in the world vary from full legal protection and even the right to marry at one end of the spectrum, to the death penalty and life imprisonment at the other end.
The countries with full rights including marriage rights are ALL western except for South Africa, which is a bit of a hybrid in many ways, with a strong western influence. Of the eight countries that have the death penalty, seven are Muslim.
If Latin America is equivalently homophobic as Islam is, why do Argentina and Mexico City have full gay marriage rights?
BTW, I notice that while our Ibn Warraq brushes aside Islam’s murderous homophobia on the grounds that there are homophobes in the west as well, he does not actually say he is against homophobia himself. Just that it is not exclusive to Islam.
Ibn also seems to imply he is a “moderate” Muslim. Of course, that would depend on your definition of the term. First of all, I am curious as to why OUR Ibn chose as his nick the name of an author who is NOT a Muslim at all, but an apostate from Islam. It seems sort of confusing (don’t worry, I have been warned not to use the T word, so I will not do so). If our Ibn self-identifies as a Muslim, why name himself after an apostate?
“Moderate” has many meanings. Some question whether moderate Islam even exists, as opposed to moderate Muslims who are really apostates in training. Can anyone who belongs to a religion whose prophet believed that the entire world must submit to his religion ever lay claim to the adjective “moderate”.
BTW, you will note that THE Ibn Warraq titled his book after “Why I am not a Chrsitian” by Bertrand Russel. But you will note that Bertrand Russel never had to use a pen name, never had to hide his identity, was never arrested for his atheism in any western country, and never, to anyone’s knowledghe, required police protection from devout Christians. Nor have authors like Richard Dawkins and a host of other “new” atheists.
Not so for Ibn Warraq, Salman Rushdie, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Danish cartoonists and other dissenters from Islam.
Right here in North America, I had the experience of asking a supposedly “moderate” imam from a local mosque what he would do if he was aware that one of these people was in town, and if he met a Muslim who was planning to kill one of them that day. Now of course, there is one, and only one acceptable answer in a democratic, law-abiding country. You call the police and report the would-be murderer, whether his a fellow Muslim of not.
What answer did I get from our “moderate” Muslim. He kept skipping around the question saying it was hypothetical and therefore unanswerable.
As one wit said, the difference between an extremist Muslim and a moderate is that while the extremist wants to kill you, the moderate explains WHY the extremist wants to kill you.
To be perfectly clear, I suggested that he explain his username for clarity’s sake, and I emphasize that it was merely a suggestion. In no wise does his decision have any bearing on the intelligence, clarity, or accuracy of his posts.
I find your insinuations offensive.