I disagree with the points that you have raised concerning how to evaluate a written article, Mitch@T4R.

It is useless to address any point an author has made without at least trying to understand the underlying motivations which caused them to write that article. An article written about gun control should not be taken seriously if it is discovered that the author is a vegan.

People who write articles may not be honest and they can use topics to push other agendas (such as animal rights) which they know most people would find potty. They therefore use other topics as Trojan Horses for their true agenda. Such people can, and do, submit "facts" and arguments which they know are untrue on the basis that their moral position is so elevated, that telling a few fibs is quite alright in order to defend that elevated moral position.

Similarly, people with hidden agendas refuse to acknowledge the most self evident facts, and they constantly seek ways to frustrate debate and lead their opponents away from the truth by tossing very smelly red herrings all over the place. If you consider all authors to be beyond reproach, and that what they write can not have a hidden agenda, then I would have to award you a Fail in seriously assessing the veracity of any written topic.

The North Koreans in 1951 presented to the UN the written "confessions" of shot down US pilots with headings like "HOW MY CRUEL CAPITALIST MASTERS FORCED ME TO PERFORM INHUMAN GERM WARFARE ON PEACE LOVING SOCIALIST PEOPLE"

Would you bother to "evaluate the points raised" in those confessions? Or "evaluate whether its reasoning was sound"? Or would you make the connection that the "confessions" were invalid and instead use the self evident fact that the North Koreans were lying to discredit anything they said?

Whereas your logic is valid when it comes to articles written by reputable people. Simply regarding all authors as paragons of virtue, and taking what is read at face value, is a great way to get led up the garden path.

I would like to add to my above post.

A preliminary reading of Uthman Badar article reveals that he is a Muslim. His credibility has taken a couple of hits, right there. Central to his loss of credibility, is the religiously ordained concept of "Taqqiya", where it is not considered a sin to lie to non believers in order to further Islam. If Muslims have a credibility problem because of that, they should take it up with their imams.

Next Uthman claims that the 500 passages in the Koran in which Allah instructs his followers to make war upon, kill, maim, torture and cut the throats of unbelievers have been "taken out of context." My personal opinion is that he knows that this is not true. He is defending the indefensible and he has to get creative with the truth to do that.

Next he equates an unsolved murder of a Muslim man in Britain, and the stabbing of a child by a drunken British soldier (who was punished for his crime by the British Army) with the murder of a British soldier for religious reasons by a Muslim man in London shouting "Allah Akhbar." I am sorry, Mitch@T4R, but I have enough to know that this character is not arguing in good faith.

Confirmation comes when he blames westerners for the deaths of "half a million" children because of UN sanctions on Iraq. That doesn't wash. The one thing he does not address is that these sanctions were lawfully administered by the UN because of the intransigence of one Saddam Hussein who played sillybuggers with UN weapons inspectors

I could go on, especially pointing out his opposition to secular liberalism, but I think I have made my point.

This is a propaganda puff piece full of outrageous assertions which are not even worth taking seriously. It is far more effective to attack the entire ideology, point out its flaws and contradictions, and examine the intent and effect that ideology has, rather than get bogged down in detail refuting claims which one strongly suspects the author already knows is untrue.

LEGO

Totally agree with you...it is a puff piece.

Islamists need to concentrate on fixing up their own primitive political ideology of a religion, before hectoring others on completely trumped claims.

He may have some moral and ethical basis if there was some semblance of equivalence between what happens in liberal democracies, where he now lives, compared with Islamic states and sundry despotic tribal regimes that he and his followers came from...and are pouring in here in illegal boat loads at the rate of near 200 day. Notably, people are not going the other way.

Try taking a bible into Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere, see how you get on.

Or point it out to women, that in Saudi they are not even allowed to have a driver’s license ...and that’s on top off being told how to dress by a bundle of ignorant Wahhabi mullahs....Mullahs epitomised by this appalling level of ignorance.

http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2013/06/islamism-decade-of-spreading-polio

Go to Malaysia and see how the bumis get preferential treatment for key positions. Try and build a church in Malaysia etc, where they continue to contrive situations knock down Hindu,Chinese and Christian churches because they never had building permits when built 150 years ago etc ...but here in Australia we bend over to let them build their mosques.

Or listen to the ex PM of Malaysia Mahathir Moahammed giving the opening address to the opening of OIC in KL a few years ago, where he ran through the whole Islamist gamut of anti semiticism eg jews fight their wars by proxy, and are descended from apes and monkies, ie straight out of the Koran.

Whilst Islamic states are still bombing, killing, raping and pillaging themselves, try naming cases where free liberal democracies have declared war on another free liberal democracy. I would like to know of any.

bigmal

very accurate assessment of Malaysia. See how also they have treated their truely indigeneous people who are only funded in many cases for electricity and water if they convert to Islam.

From reading the comments here, the overall argument seems to be that:

a. Islam is a violent religion and Muslims are not nice people, therefore the West has had to

b. inflict violence on Muslim countries in order to stop Muslims from being violent and not-nice people, but unfortunately

c. this has not stopped Muslims from being violent and not-nice people, so

d. the West must keep on inflicting more violence on Islamic countries until they stop being violent and become nice people.

There. I’m glad we’ve sorted that out.

Killarney,

I'm not sure how on earth you come to that tortured conclusion. Here's another take on it:

A. Islam is a Utopian ideology and like all Utopias, there is room in the Islamic world only for believers in Islam - others will have to be (and have been over 1400 years) regrettably 'subtracted', as in all proto-fascist systems;

B. Islam is a religious ideology founded on violence (see above) and derives its authority from a garbled and reactionary selection from pre-existing desert, Judaic and Christian folk beliefs and half-digested biblical accounts - it is an ideology which is not to be criticised, and which is solidly based on male dominance and hierarchy.

C. It cleaves to an inegalitarian set of principles with a bogus veneer of equality between all Muslims (except for women) - there can never, in this ideology, be equality between believers and nonbelievers, such a notion would be abhorrent;

D. Muslims are no better or worse than any other people, save that they are at the mercy of a backward and destructive ideology. Their men are good-looking and their women are beautiful, but they have been locked into a repulsive set of ideas which will be extremely difficult for them to break out of, since it is supposed not only to have all the answers, but cannot be criticised.

E. Even so, one cannot NOT be a Muslim, one cannot become a non-believer - the punishment for this, as for so many other breaches of this vile code, is death. To a large extent, Muslims are trapped in a time-warp, while the rest of the world is rushing past them.

I feel dreadfully sorry for Muslims. I fear that they have many years, perhaps centuries, of violent and internecine warfare, not to mention struggles with non-Muslims, of which Syria is not just an example, but a horrific forerunner.

Joe