Hate to say it, but I have a sense of humour. All of us need it in today's world.

So what do you think of all those French Jews moving to Israel? Isn't that just what Palestinians and Israel's Arab neighbors need -- more Jews next door?

Wouldn't it be more logical for Muslims to do everything possible to make Jews happy and safe outside of Israel? (Ibrahim says: "Hey Jacob, do you need help with that package?")

Or is it just the god of Israel (and/or Christians) gathering his people back from exile for the fun of the last days? (Ezekiel, Daniel and Revelation). I have already told my Jewish neighbors that their children, if not themselves, should seriously consider moving to Israel because it is going to get bad. Good thing I'm a goy boy.

Luciferase,

You say on the 13th that
<<All nations should control their own resources.>> Good to hear that from you!

And on the 12th you were furious at me for my statement that you quoted.

"There is nothing wrong with the Muslims, like other nations in the post-colonial era, to aim for controlling their own resources."

See the contradiction ?

Is it not HUGE?

If you answered all questions of my post of the 13th, more of you would be on display. But you have avoided it.

Any remorse on your part for lashing out at me for saying earlier exactly what you yourself say now?

None!

But then, it needs a personal trait far weightier than impressive wording and slick language.

And now you bring in:

<<Islam is not a nation. Islam has no seat in the United Nations.>>

Nobody said that.

You can waste hours of your time writing about your assumptions of what the other side has in mind.

This is red herring. I avoid that.

“Secular democracy”, has not been treated by me, as I recall, in my interaction with you so far.

Still you seem to have views on my ‘assumed’ views!

We can talk about secular democracy. (The outmoded caliphate is the thing of past. You don’t see any Muslim nation officially or unofficially vying to revive it and you don’t see mainstream Muslim scholarship projecting it either. Fringe scholarship and minority groups must be seen as exceptions, rather than the rules.)

For a detailed discussion, frankly, my current experience with you combined with your earlier interchange with McAdam that I followed closely is no encouragement.

You made sweeping statements on Pakistan’s affairs based on your scant knowledge of the ground realities. Fortunately McAdam was there to expose the shallow base that supported your unsupportable lofty claims.

Need for introspection on you part?
Your subject!

Hi Kactuz,

"Good thing I'm a goy boy."

Don't kid yourself :) I think the Islamists have special punishments for atheists like SPQR and you and me.

Somebody claimed above, I think, that Islam brought peace to other countries, as in the Middle East, North Africa, Spain up into France, central Asia, Turkey, India, China. They almost brought peace to Japan but a storm destroyed their 'fleet of peace'. They had their arses kicked by the Vietnamese on the Hong (Red) river in their attempt to bring peace there.

But on that criteria - that wherever one's empire extends, by definition, that must mean that they brought 'peace' - then every empire known to history has 'brought peace'. If the Islamists got hold of our history curriculum, would they be teaching that ?

Much of what NC/McAdam raves about, Muhammad yada yada, means very little to me, as an atheist - he was a bloke (to the extent that he actually existed) but also perhaps a con-man, a rapist, a sadist (if slitting a pregnant woman's belly open constitutes sadism) and a warmonger, perhaps a psychotic as well. Hardly a paragon, or worth giving a minute's time too really.

By the way, out of interest, are their any love songs which are Islamist ? Do they have a concept of love at all ? The Sufis, perhaps, but not Salafists or other assorted fascists. A promise of non-stop 72 virgins yes, but love ?

So what makes their world go around then ?

Joe

"you are not stupid or naive, and you know this whole issue is not over and maybe will never be over. It is oil and water, I think. Kactuz"

The confusion arises when the seekers of "oil", invoke religion to mask their greed and an army of gullible masses follows them. "God said to me George..." As if God had said, go after the non existing WMDs and kill 1.5 million innocents for the sake of oil.

Earlier the need had arisen to deliver the death blow to "Evil Empire" of Soviet Union. They were lured into occupation of Afghanistan, and the Afghans were encouraged to rally around the cause of Islam to defeat the infidels....they did.

Soviet Union is dead but the threat to the coffers of greed, is still alive.
Islam forbids usury and commands sharing of wealth with the disadvantaged. It is the most rapidly spreading religion and ideology...even in the west. So the threat is not from the primitive followers of Islam in the third world, marching on to conquer the planet. No sense able analysis can show, it's practicability. It is the possibility of people from west starting to embrace the message of Islam, that poses credible threat. They are the target of current effort. They must be insulated from Islam. The Muslims must be projected as threat and restricted. Urgent action, in this regard is needed " before Muslims get the numbers". Understandably a book titled, The Fall and Rise of Islamic State, is published in 2008 by Noah Feldman, a Jew. He warns the world about the increasingly popular call for the establishment of the shari'a--the law of the traditional Islamic state--in the modern Muslim world, and this being a threat to democracy. Islamist movements are winning elections on it. Terrorists use it to justify their crimes. The world better watch out, he warns.
Then IS is created by Saudi Arabia and UAE, the world is informed by the U.S. Vice President. ( he withdrew his statement later) Saudi Arabia, which is pumping it's only resource mercilessly to glut the world market
Continues

Continued:
at throw-away-price to serve the Western agenda of squeezing Putin's Russia, is doing some thing in defiance of US, we are asked to believe.

The world being told that the Muslims whose combined GDP is less than California's, who have rampant problems of ignorance and poverty, who would require a few generations, to come up to the level of self sufficiency, were capable of taking over the world....And IS is borne and is named by the West as ISIS , then ISIL and then plain IS. The oddities of its birth and life so far were discussed briefly, on this thread.

Wether this struggle, that world is being plunged into is really necessary.? Will it succeed? are questions that different people would answer differently, yet clearly every body in the world is not on the same page.

The events of Paris violence are very illustrative. The resolve of the leaders of the western world,gathered in Paris on a day's notice, shows a concerted effort of the political leadership of the world. Mainstream media leadership, fully supports them, as evident by the position taken by Robert Murdoch, in his tweet of 9 January"Maybe most Moslems peaceful, but until they recognize and destroy their growing jihadist cancer they must be held responsible."
Then on the other side are the likes of J K Rowling, who tweets back on 11Jan; "I was born Christian. If that makes Rupert Murdoch my responsibility, I'll auto-excommunicate." Then answering her critics, on same day, she tweeted; "Eight times more Muslims have been killed by so-called Islamic terrorists than non-Muslims."

During the unfortunate incident in Paris where violence was being committed in the name of religion, Lassana Bassily, a young immigrant from Mali, switched off freezer and let jewish customers hide in there. He is the young man who handed over keys to police. He saved precious lives of fellow humans, risking his own, and he is a Muslim. Again in Paris, it is Muhammed Amine, a Muslim immigrant from Morocco, who saved a Jew Lilian (Both incidents reported by CBS News 11Jan.)
Continues

Continued:

Clearly, the every day Muslim has nothing to do with violence.....a conclusion that most of us on this forum, have already arrived at.

What would be the end result of this struggle, which has just started? It can fail or it can succeed, in putting all types of restrictions on Muslims. If it fails, the world proceeds, more or less on the existing lines. If it succeeds, what happens then is a question to ponder. Muslims got decisively crushed by the Mongol hordes. Their message however remained available.
Baraka Khan, who was chief of the Golden Horde from 1256 to 1267 was first to leave Shamanism and to embrace Islam. His rival Hulagu,s son Takudar, also embraced Islam. It is these Mongols and their descendants that spread Islam to the length and breadth of Asia and Europe. Lesson learnt is that force does not destroy an idea.

Whole truth may never be told but we have the inputs from the likes of NC who put in hard work to dig out the verifiable information and also the input from those who deal with superfluous and the obvious and rely on off the cough waffles like questioning the right of people to have control of their own resources. We will have the inputs from the likes of Murdoch pedaling their agenda and the stands of the likes of JK Rowling and Craig Minns, on this thread, who have the capacity to discern the truth and express it confidently.
For us commoners the lines are clearly drawn. Pick your sides; you want to attack people's religion or kill people for their religion, like the terrorist in Paris did or you want to save other people, risking your own life, if necessary, regardless of their religion, like Lassana Bassily and Muhammad Amine did. Or we want to support squeezing every day Muslims, who have nothing to do with violence?
In any case the extraordinary times require extra ordinary vigilance to be on the side of truth rather than being consumed by the blind hate....the real message of the article we are discussing.