Wow!
Post a bit more, will ya! 
I just realised I could get banned if I was attributing made-up quotes to other posters. So: Any quotes in my above post was of course written by me and no-one else. Please think of it as so obvious strawmanning that it’s parody. Sorry.
:smack: 
Cite, please, especially about the ignorant part. OK, while you’re at it, how about a cite that he’s a tool of the neo-cons?
But we have agreed, repeatedly, that there is a threat from some elements of Islam. See, I’ll quote myself from the very post you responded to:
So, apparently there is no real disagreement that an Islamist threat exists; you’re just annoyed, for some reason, that we don’t join in your hatefest to the degree you feel is warranted.
At this point it well past time for you to show the goods. I say again, show a sense of responsibility, and demonstrate the courage of your convictions, and tell us how you would like to address the “muslim problem”.
What is it that you liked about that post? Obviously YMMV but I just didn’t get the urge to stand up and applaud. Seemed to me like s/he was saying here’s my stereotype of what you must be thinking and it’s dumb. Didn’t get much else. What did I miss?
BTW, it’s not like I’m trying to pick a fight with Bagistan. I would have just kept going had it not been for the standing O.
Ex-Muslim here, and I agree with the OP re Islam. There are a lot of good people who are Muslim, but to be honest, it scares the crap out of me, and I think that as a whole Islam is a force for evil in this world, and if it were to go the way of Manichaeism I would not shed a tear.
To be fair he wouldn’t stop saying “Jehovah.”
Hatefest? Has Valteron claimed to hate anyone? If he is afraid of what will happen if some Muslims get their way and enforce their views upon us in the west, then he is well within his rights to be concerned. Who do you think wanted to implement aspects of Sharia law in Ontario? The Taliban? Not likely. Probably just ordinary people wanting to do what they think was best for, or to protect, their community. While I see no reason to hate such people, I think they are misguided by trying to cling to outdated and detrimental practices in a society that values other ideals.
Not to speak for Valetron, but here are some suggestions:
By making sure the laws don’t provide special rights for any one religion over any others (I think of Alberta where we have a separate school board for Catholics. A pretty stupid allowance in that it opens the door for any other religion to open up their own schools.). The Ontario government has done this by eliminating all faith based alternatives to the provincial legal system.
Make sure that everyone, man and women, who applies to come to our countries knows what their rights and responsibilities are before they come.
I would also suggest that any new immigrant who arrives after they have reached a certain age (say age 12) never has the right to vote or hold public office in their lifetime. The next generation certainly as they’ve had a chance to adapt to our society.
Actually, there are Catholic school boards right across Canada. There have been for a long, long time. I gather you’re not aware that they were a guarantee under the BNA Act. You know, the one that, in essence, created Canada as a country.
And so what if people have separate school boards? Are you aware that people support their own school boards, so that Catholics’ taxes go to Catholic schools? If people are willing to put their own money towards educating their kids the way they like, let them.
Canada is not a Borg-mentality nation. We coexist. There’s no need to assimilate. You add richness and depth to a nation by welcoming different people and their cultural contributions. Trying to force everyone into a mold of ‘just like everybody else’ is a nauseating prospect. I fear and dread people who fear and dread differences in people.
This all looks rather asymetrical to me, Valteron has strong views and is promoting hatred of extremist Moslems. However extremist Moslems are promoting hatred of us, and I suspect Valteron, for life style reasons, more than most.
Somehow I don’t think that Valteron has it in for moderate Moslems, so in effect he is attacking a minority - and that minority appears to have it in for us.
Since this is the Pit, I have no qualms about maliciously coining a phrase:
- it appears that there are such people as ‘Islamist Deniers’
Fortunately I’ve got along fine with all Moslems I’ve met, but I’ve been alarmed by listening to rants on the radio, stuff on the TV, and first hand stuff from other people.
‘Islamist Deniers’ seem to be like people who thought Stalin was a nice guy in 1950, and that Comintern was on par with the British Council.
Stirring up hatred of Ok people is to me wrong, but stirring up hatred of followers of Osama Bin Laden strikes me as a social duty.
Perhaps I’ve misunderstood what Valteron is up to, but if he is using a fine brush rather than a broad brush then I think he has a point.
Here’s a much better Ask the Muslim thread than the one upthread. Longer with much more detailed answers.
I wonder where that guy went. He was so patient and unrattle-able.
Yeah, I know that one. I figured that it was only an Albertan thing that guaranteed such idiocy. Oh, well. It is nice to know that stupidity is country wide.
Is that why I have to pick ‘separate’ or ‘public’ on my property tax form?
And maybe it might be a good thing that Christian kids grow up with Secular kids who grow up with Muslim kids, who grow up with Jewish kids, who grow up with Hindu kids, etc instead of them never interacting until they get older and are completely indoctrinated to the fact that those people over there are ‘different’ and therefore not to be trusted?
I think mixing together where dialogue can ensue is far better in the long run than standing apart and screaming at each other.
Having kids all go to one school to learn, not just from the teachers, but from each other is not assimilation. It is developing a common understanding of each other that can form a long term basis of cooperation. Geez! :rolleyes:
Do you mean good cultural contributions or bad cultural contributions? Or are they all good in your relativistic world?
While ignoring the hypocrisy in this statement where did I say (who works in the ME) I feared anyone?
I disagree with Valteron on most everything, and we certainly are far from needing to fear Islam in the United States, but it looks like Indonesia is on the verge of slipping from a secular nation into one dominated by radical Islam, and I do think that’s an alarming trend.
We should make sure we don’t let the U.S. succumb to radical Christianity.
I’m sorry you feel that way–not being sarcastic, I really am.
I think Islam is a good religion, with good points to be made, but (and this is my WAG) with the way Western-Eastern politics are going the extremists and the moderates have become polarized, and the extremists are preaching their doctrine to people who* really *have a beef against Israel (the Palestinian occupation) and against the West in general (the Gulf Wars, the oil policies, the U.S.'s support of Israel). And these are the kind of people who blow stuff up and get headlines, and the moderates get shouted down in the chaos.
It’s a bad situation, but I don’t think Islam should be given up on as a whole. Not contesting your decision or anything, though–if you feel that’s the right choice for you, good for you and I hope things work out.
(And because I looked back over my post and went :smack:: I mean the Palestinian occupation in terms of the disputed territories–I’m not anti-Israel or anti-Palestine, I’m holding out for some solution that lets everybody get along without the people blowing stuff up and getting headlines.)
Since you already know what I am thinking, (perhaps telepathically) maybe you could save yourself time and trouble by just communicating telephathically with all of us and not even bothering to come on this Message Board! 
I have not been to Iran but I know of a group of British sailors who have been. What I find interesting is that the female among them had to wear a hijab. When she arrived back in Britain, she was no longer wearing it. I hope she threw it into the sea!
So when a female is in a Muslim country, she should dress as according to Muslim custom. And so logically, when a woman is in the west, she should follow. . . . .why Muslim custom of course! Only Islam is right, didn’t you know?
You seem to be interested in knowing how I got to this horrible state of having an opinion different from yours. Since you ask. . . . . .
If the Valteron in your little mini-play is supposed to be, it so happens that I have had Muslim friends here in Canada since 1978, when hardly anyone in the west knew anything about Islam. I read the Koran in 1965, believe it or not, on my own, out of interest! I have a university degree and have done postgraduate studies, an I have a wide range of interests. I met many Mulim students in University, mainly French-speaking ones from Lebanon and North Africa.
It was gradually, in the 1990s that I began to feel growing concern. Actually, 9-11 did not hit me as hard as you might imagine because I had been expecting something like it. It was the sight of cheering Muslims all over the world that really struck me. And please do not give me that old chesnut about how the footage of cheering Palestinians was from another event. That has since been disproven. They were cheering the deaths on 9-11. And even if that particular clip HAD been inaccurate, there was plenty of other genuine evidence of Muslim rejoicing, including a Muslim professor in France who joyfully told his studnts it “showed what they could do” when Muslims organized. It does indeed, my dear professor. It does indeed!
Another thing that struck me is highly personal. A good friend and drinking buddy of mine was a guy that I met in the 1970s. He defined himself as an ex-Muslim. I lost touch with him, but I met him about a year or two ago. In our conversation, I noticed he now defines himself as a Muslim. When I asked why, he told me it is **too dangerous ** IN CANADA in the 2000s to declare yourself an apostate Muslim. He also goes to Mosque, which he had not done in the 1970s and 1980s. But today, if he stopped going, he would come under suspicion.
So what you ask? What does this tidbit prove? Admittedly, it shows nothing more than a piece of jigsaw puzzle. It is when you put all the pieces together that a picture starts to emerge.
Are you sure that was the link you wanted? It certainly indicates that growing power among the extremists could be a threat to stability. However, it presented no evidence that the country is actually sliding anywhere. The recent elections were carried out peacefully and democratically despite the terrorist bombing that preceded them, the government is prosecuting the agents who carried out both that bombing and the Bali bombing. Nothing in the article indicates that the exremists will ultimately wield more power than the American Nazis of the 1930s or that Indonesia (which already has a lot of authoritarian history to prepare it) could not resort to an Algerian solution if the Islamists got out of hand.
Are incidents in Indonesia troubling? Absolutely. Are they indicative that 220 million people are gleefully sliding into Wahabbist fervor? No.
I think we should do what we can to support democratic reforms while working to let the great masses of people see just where Islamist extremism will take them, (show them Taliban Afghanistan in all its wonders), but it is a situation to be addressed that will be better addressed by calm thinking than chicken-little panic.
So Indonesia, the world’s largest Islamic country, is on the verge of slipping from a secular nation into one dominated by radical Islam.
Well, as frightening as that is, it is an ill wind that blows nobody any good. Now the knee-jerk politcally-correct who keep trotting out Indonesia as an exception to trot out may lose it.
And how about the extremist Islamic party in Turkey?
Or the Islamist extremists who actually won the election in Algeria? And Hamas in Palestine? How is it that these extremists who allegedly do not represent the average Muslim are able to win elections?
In another set of postings, you began by saying that the current round of terrorism started in the Wahabbist sect. When I questioned you about that you said that it started there and spread to others. Is there any evidence that the extremists in Indonesia need to adhere to Wahabbism in order to be extremists?