Dear runner,

You are a self-proclaimed Christian and yet
you choose to judge and blame Islam for the
actions of extremists within that group.
As you well know any religion can be mis-used
for a variety of purposes. The brutality of
Christianity is also there as part of our global
history. So before pointing fingers - how about cleaning
up your own backyard first.

Dear Foxy.

I can only shake my head in pitying wonder that a woman like yourself can defend Islam and it's adherents.

Everything that you support as a left liberal is haram in Islam. Everything which you oppose as a left liberal is advocated by Islam. You should be a natural enemy towards Islam, but you just can't get your head around the idea that an ethnic minority can be wrong about anything. You feel compelled to indulge in the most amazing mental gymnastics to defend a religion you should be opposing with all your might. You just read Tanveer Ahmad, he says that the most revered Muslim jurists think that Muslims killing Muslims is very bad. But killing the "enemies" of Islam is perfectly OK. Islam own scriptures and Islam's own leaders think that killing for Islam is Ok and you defend it? Ama-a-a-a-zing.

When you are next on one of these "Muslim" sites where they are supposedly attacking their own religious scriptures, ask them if apostates and homosexuals should be murdered? Ask them if it is OK to criticise Islam? Ask the male Muslims if it is OK to beat their wives with a rod "no thicker than a thumb?" Ask the male Muslims if they believe in female equality?

For more than 60 years, leftist apologists made every excuse for Stalin's terror in which millions were executed or internally deported. People like you made every excuse while Mao tse Tung killed 50 million of his own people through starvation and sociaolist incompetence. Here we are in 2014 and your ilk are still running around making excuses for any enemy of the western democracies. The western democracies you choose to live in.

What gives with you people? Are you psychologically conditioned to think that people who oppose their own people's values, attitudes and behaviours are rooly, rooly smart? Beause if you do, you are not thinking very smart at all.

Lego, you mention Stalin and Mao. These two evil men killed their own people. Can you get your tiny mind around that fact?

The U.S. is killing people from many nations around the world and has been doing so for centuries. It started with the Native Indians then moved out into the rest of the world.

Some of the people that America has killed don't like America. They don't like what America stands for which is endless plundering and killing. They are fighting back.

Can't say I blame them.

LEGO

Christians and Muslims are free to criticise Christianity and Islam all they like. Both religions have plenty in them to criticise.

What you and others here are doing is using Islam's defects to justify the West's relentless bombing, invading, destabilising, regime-changing and propagandist demonising of Muslim countries.

When looked at from a broader perspective, and over several decades, the West is clearly practising a slow genocide on the Arab and semi-Arab nations, not the other way round.

And just a couple of corrections to some myths being toted around on this thread:

1. Yes, millions starved in a major famine during Mao's tenure, but that particular famine was one of many that have afflicted China over the last 200 years - all with comparable loss of life. Singling out the famine under Mao as being caused by communism is simplistic in the extreme. In fact, the last 50 years under communism in China has been the longest period over the past two centuries in which China has NOT been afflicted by famine.

2. FGM is NOT contained anywhere in the Koran and, in fact, predates Islam. It's culturally based and was probably imported into the ME from Africa, where it's been practised for millennia.

Dear LEGO,

With all due respect.

I can only do what my logic dictates.
I'm not into making personal judgements about
Islam (I'm not qualified to) and I don't like
tarring everyone of any religion with the same
brush as those who -
mis-use that religion (fundamentalists and
extremists) for their own political gains.
All I can do is try to present
different perspectives from different sources
and let people make up their own minds on the subject.

As far as ISIS is concerned - it is quite difficult
to imagine a strategy that would be effective
against individuals so depraved.

What I would like to see on the forum is a thoughtful,
lively, sometimes provocative but always productive
debate on these issues. Not just finger-pointing and
accusations. This is one of the most complex regions
in the world, with the instability of Iraq and the
dark consequences of Syria's civil war. We need to argue
this stuff out and I am at a loss to understand where
our Australian instinct to argue has gone.

Killarney,

You might find these interesting:
http://islamqa.info/en/45528
http://www.fstdt.com/QuoteComment.aspx?QID=29989&Page=3