It's all about good PR.

The radical clerics use any pretext to pose for the cameras and play the media as expertly as our team, only better because they have God and oil on their side, and all we have is McDonalds and Jesus which ultimately sucks because McDonald's has no nutritional value and Jesus was a pacifist.

The cartoons. The Pope. It's all so predictable. And funny.

Unless you're the nun who got offed.

You beat me too it! :snap:

ya know what I find funny-

You have Christian radicals- and some people happily paint all Christians with that brush.

You have Muslim radicals- and people jump in to defend the group and insist that it's just a fringe.

Not pointing fingers- if you feel defensive about my comment, maybe you are one of those who does it......or not.

I guess I have seen too many people say that radical Christians are more dangerous than radical Muslims- meh.....

Exactly their point.

So, it's OK to paint all Muslims with the same brush as you did above but it's not OK do paint Christians with same said brush? Or, am I missing something very important here?

Don't forget the KKK - I think they burn things to the ground in the name of religion too, don't they?

...I think they're religious?



I

wierdo double post thingy

OOooooo how did that happen ??


anyhoo... I think the Hare Krishna movement has it right - you never see them causing violence !

Hate to say it, but I'm with Neph on this one.

In this day and age, Islam - thru the acts of its extreme and twisted adherants - is getting a repulation for violence. And its vast majority of peaceful practicioners are not doing enough to counter the label they are being stuck with unfairly.


This week, Colin Powell wrote, "The world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism." Can we deny America's piss-poor repulation in the world? And yet it's true that most Americans are peaceful, justice-loving folk. But we are hiding our heads in the sand if we don't realize that our government is acting with powerful forces that erode our reputation in the world.

The same thing may be happening to Muslims. But it's no more mistaken, imo, to say that Islam is a violent religion than it is to say America is a violent nation.

Personally, I view interdenominational violence to be a hugely systemic element if Islam. But fortunately one that the vast majority of Muslims have rationalized out of their own practice of the faith.

Combine these systemic elements with social conditions that tend to create violent radicalism (poverty, lack of education, insularity) and widespread violent fundamentist Islam is pretty much inevitable.

It is a simple fact that the holy source text for the religion explicitly lays out how non-believers are to be overran, oppressed, and forcibly converted.

Certainly people of all faiths have found ways to use their faith in support of violence but some require more twisting than others (with Christianity, specifically, it tends to require going to the grumpy-God of the Old Testament rather than the specific teachings of "Jesus Christ."