Thanks, Tanveer. Very bhalo.

"The purpose of the invasion of Iraq, regardless of the inadequacies of its political justification, was not to kill innocent civilians. The Americans do make an attempt to show regret for civilian deaths."

Many would argue that this is the result of better propaganda on the part of the British and the Americans. Every single thing that Blair or Bush says is broadcast, and then interpreted by media pundits who, while often critical of the two leaders, essentially hold the view that, despite the mistakes that have made, the West is essentially good, and the enemies of the West are essentially bad. How often have you seen a speech by a member of al-Quaeda on mainstream television, and then heard their "political justification" seriously debated? The fact that western leaders are able to repeat, unchalleneged, the patently ridiculous line that terrorists 'hate us for our freedom' is proof enough that the mainstream media are not doing their job.

In my opinion the problem is not "the inability of many Muslims to see the moral difference between the attacks in London and the invasion of Iraq", it is the inability of western leaders to see the moral similarities. They were both heinous crimes, for which all perpetrators should be arrested and brought to trial. The right person to decide which crime was worse, and therefore deserving of a longer sentence, is a judge.

Dave.

Dave, if you start with 'all war is unjustice and immoral' you will end where you just posted. (and somehow feel WW2 was 'Immoral' because we fought on many fronts for the freedom which allows YOU to express the view you just did without fear)

Do you understand why the Hutu slaughtered the Tutzi ? Before I read up on it, but you have to go back a long way, at least a 1000 yrs.
Lookup 'Twa' people.

I felt so sorry for the Tutzi as a race, now I just feel sorry for the individuals who lost their lives and I have a much greater understanding of, and sympathy for, the Hutu's who I formerly regarded as 'genocidal animals'and now who I regard as desperate survivors.
Do some searches and you might have a new understanding of 'life' and human nature.

On topic: (and if anyone gives me the 'hate' speech, I'll be offended, if this is hard to take, respond with something about the Lord Jesus Christ (if they can find anything like it, which is impossible) , I wont mind)

When Muslims can condemn their own prophet for his torture, willful murder of individuals and mass murder of tribes, and recognize that when a 60+ yr old man calling himself a prophet of God has a sexual relationship with a 9 yr old girl, without rationalizations about 'culture', then the would be a chance of 'moral clarity' in fundamental Islam.
The 'culture' argument falls in a heap when you consider that the Quran and Mohammed were meant to be the 'final word from Allah' to man, hence, in cultural terms there was no legitimate reason for anything to change from how it was in those days till now, and that includes Surah 23.5-6 about captive slave girls.

This is one of the reasons the Wahabi's regard less 'obedient' Muslims as borderline Kafirs.

Sheikh Omran said a day or 2 ago that 'I, the Muslims are winning'
His wording was such that it is clear he regards less radicals like Hilali as 'non muslims'

Tanveer you say that suicide is illegal in islam - that is not what many,toooooo many, of your leaders say!.That it is quite proper for moslems to lie to what you call unbelievers, even for islamic governments to repudiate pacts and treaties, I forget the term used but YOU WOULD KNOW IT VERY WELL! There is no way I can believe those whom I consider death loving pagans or heathens - no way at all. That is so sad as I do not hate those of other beliefs but I am very wary of moslems I'm afraid. Tanveer do your fellow believers realise the whirlwind that will descend on them. We civilised westerners will take just so much lies and deceit, just so much death and destruction. It is so sad that moslems are so bad. numbat

"Dave, if you start with 'all war is unjustice and immoral'"

I suggested no such thing.

"On topic: (and if anyone gives me the 'hate' speech, I'll be offended, if this is hard to take, respond with something about the Lord Jesus Christ (if they can find anything like it, which is impossible) , I wont mind)"

I make no defense of muslims who do not condemn the things that you mentioned.

I'm afraid to get into this, because relgion vs religion conversations are always so pointless, however lacking the motivation to do any work today, I'll bite. The Old Testament explicitly condones slavery in a number of different books. Slavery is mentioned in passing a number of times in the New Testament, but not condemned, and it was certainly never explicitly condemned by Jesus himself. If Jesus did not approve of slavery, it would be strange for him to not say so, considering how common the practise was at the time. One could therefore conclude that Jesus supported the practise of slavery. Do you agree?

Dave

Dave
well made points. Don’t worry about the R/R discussion, I will just give some perspectives and leave it at that.
On Slavery, the Old Testament picture is not straightforward, the most critical point is to know which type of slavery is being referred to. “Debt” slavery (I can testify about that :) me to the CBA) and ‘captive in war’ slavery. Yes, it does teach about it. But it also gives guidelines for their humane treatment.
The New Testament is more sympathetic to the slave. It was a social reality of the day, and in principle, Jesus taught “Do for others as you would have them do for you” so I hardly think in saying this he is expressing support for Slavery. If you look at all these passages, you can see that while slavery (being a huge industry and social reality of that time) was acknowledged, the ‘sting’ of slavery was removed by Masters and Slaves both working for the glory of God, and Masters are urged to be fair.
My own experience with how the gospel impacted a tribal culture which did have slavery, is that the slaves were freed, and given land and buffalo. I have a nice photo of my wifes granny with 2 former slaves. They are like family. (and regard themselves as such).
http://www.religioustolerance.org/sla_bibl2.htm <== This link is not a Christian one, but I think it treats the issue fairly so I give it for your perusal.

The emphasis in the bible really, both old and new testaments, is on our own relationship with God, and obedience to Him. But only in Christ can we experience that fullness. Once rightly related and reconciled to God, our horizontal (social) relationships fall into place.

I feel thoroughly awful sometimes when I speak as a ‘social’ creature with Irfan and other Muslims, because I attack the foundation of their own faith. I don’t do that with a ‘mean spirited’ intention, but as much as I can its ‘speaking the truth in love’. Being ‘not yet perfect’ I do err at times :)

Religion is enslavement, demanding you be obedient to your god, no matter what the outcome. All the religious, are enslaved to cloaked evil and deadly fallacies. I think your gods have made monumental mistakes, (if they exist).

I am quite sure that with the example religions provide to the world, an observer would be hard pressed to find anything decent,kind or caring from any branch of religion throughout history.

There is one solution, create a climate on Mars, get your gods to ship you all there and leave you to it. At least there isn't much to destroy up there and all the rational non believers would be able to get on with their lives in peace and harmony, providing this planet with some chance of survival from the evil destruction of nature and life forms, by the religious.

Until the religious can see beyond their fear of taking responsibility for their lives, instead of throwing that responsibility onto legendary myths, nothing will change and the coming religious war will overwhelm us all. The underlining theme with all posts regarding religion from the enslaved religious, is they are right and everyone else is wrong, and they will destroy you to prove it. No matter what the consequences for those not involved in their fantasies.

The solution for Australia is to restrict the expression of religion or the wearing of religious clothing or symbols to the home and designated places of worship. Then we can develop an Australian culture that allows religious freedom, but also allows the non religious to not have their freedoms walked on. Other than that, the religious should move to the countries where their religion is entrenched and in control of their lives, so they may be happy.

We only ask, provide us with evidence of the existence, material fact or physical spiritual proof of GOD/ALLAH's being a realistic fact. Until you do, you are just doing what all religions have done through history, all ecncompassing power and control. But please no scripture, you can't live in the past forever, it's already overwhelming you.

Well... I don't claim to know the correct policy(s) to fix these issues. But, The Alchemist is kind of right I think... because seriously when you stay up all-night and then you unfortunately get subjected to all the Christian TV…

I mean, it should be illegal to show some of that content, in that context on a public medium like TV… the greater chunk of what they server up is absolute rubbish, and there is no a sane person on earth who could seriously clam otherwise…

Just think about it, if I start a “Colt”, which is basically a non-mainstream religion, not generally known and or accepted by the community. Now if I did nothing illegal, but I publicly ranted and raved on and on, over and over with different “lies/Miss truths” and/or “totally outrageous and totally unproven” claims about myself or some other individual, and I was not, as I said, able to prove a single claim…

Only a few different outcomes would occur…

• I would get laughed out of town, the state and eventually the country
• I would get accessed of some heinous acts/crimes, tried convicted and sent to jail, never to be released
• Or I would be locked away in a metal instruction, to root, until I died, where no one would have to worry about me….

Now, if I do exactly the same thing but talk about one of the more major religions. I am totally fine, well respected, upstanding citizen with in the community. And could properly convince enough people somewhere, sometime it was totally fine, and even a good idea, to go over to our rival religion, in the next valley and slaughter them…. Hmmm because there make believe god was not as good as out make believe god…

I mean, the bible has been rewritten… how many times? By how many people, to reflect and portray whose, interpretation of what happened, how many hundreds of years ago…

The church would also have to be one of the biggest businesses out; it’s a business that sells fear, face it… nothing more nothing less…. It can claim all it likes it does this and it does that, but basically over history, the church/religion has been the biggest, longest running business around…

So, let’s step back for a moment to take a look at this…
What have we really got?

A few bunches of blokes running around the world… searching for the weak and vulnerable, targeting the easiest pray. Selling there own brands of fear, inciting hatred of the other types of religion (or competing businesses also selling different brands of fear) and then trying to dictate to the rest of us, sane people. Who just want to live in peace and not run around blowing our selves or others up? With either a backpack full of explosives or an M16 and a frag grenade.

Now, I have not idea what people will think of my thoughts. I will more than likely be labeled as some, devil loving, colt leader wannabe? Because I am, knocking, religion in general, But, I mean, common… it’s the bloody 21st century…

And were still letting these idiots dictate how we live… its crazy.

the religions arn't the worry, its their effects in society that matters!

the topic is muslims taking more resposibilty for i assume terrorism,
well one way may be to actully give up the religion of islam, as many xtians have done in disgust, thing is muslims dont seem to give it up ......nor do there seem to be many moderate muslims who give anything more than lip service to terrorist issues.......

so yeh lets see a show of islamic denouncment...

We've found him! Tanveer Ahmed is the first, repeat first Islamic person I have heard who doesn't apologise in some way for terrorism, who actually seems to genuinely be against it, against the extremist aspects of Islam. As I read the article I kept thinking when are you going to blame the west, or call us racists, or some other nonsense that Muslims use to justify their barbarity.

The events in Iraq or Afghanistan have nothing to do with Muslim aggression. How many Muslims in Australia held protests during the late 1980's, or all throughout the 1990's for that matter, when Saddam Hussein was killing Shi'ites, or Kurds? They don't care about human rights, Islam is totally against them! Similarly, after WWII no Islamic nation was willing to accept Palestinian refugees when Israel was founded by the UN. To this day, Palestinian refugees are treated like garbage, as are all other ethnic minorities in Arab nations. There are even Palestinian-Syrians in our detention centre's now, who can't go home to Syria as they aren't recognised.

The comments about Muslims feeling victimised was spot on too. All too often we hear from Muslims that they're unemployment rate is sky high because we are racist. What nonsense. Indians are foreigners, yet they have low unemployment, they don't form ethnic gangs who bash "Aussie skips" out the front of Westfields, they obviously aren't as ethnocentric. They don't fit in because they are racist, by and large, and their leaders need to be replaced. Does the Islamic community understand how ridiculous it looks to us westerners to have a man of hate, a man who is a known liar (especially over his dealings in Iraq regarding Douglas Wood) as their leader?

Excellent article Tanveer, I look foward to reading more of your commonsense, rational thinking, that is sadly, lacking in most of your bretheren.

Tanveer

Thank you very much for your article. It's so "fair dinkum" that I have been thinking about it for days - wondering if you are too good to be true? I was waiting for the inevitable: but, if, however - which Muslim leaders use with such regular monotony.

Benjamin's first paragraph says it all!

Many thanks once again
Cheers
Kay

So the thread in this forum kind of sidetracked a little (as of course they usually do).

But I wanted to mention a compelling book I read recently re: the supposed inherent irrationality of religion. It's entitled The Case for Christ (by Lee Strobel) and was written by a former atheist now turned Christian.

It still leaves the question up to the reader, but it shows that it is possible to be an intelligent, rational being and still believe in a deity (specifically, one described by the Christian Bible).

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0310209307/102-9273984-3004930?v=glance

That has absolutely nothing to do with Ahmed's article, and I'm sorry for that, but I get really mad when I hear people assert that religious people are automatically stupid, as people in this thread seem to have. The majority of Australians are religious, and unless some proof can be found in the negative, that a God/gods does/do not exist (can a negative be proven?), I don't think atheists/agnostics have the right to lord over others their assumed superiority of thought. They have as little proof for their opinions as they accuse their crazy Christian/Muslim/whoever counterparts of having.

Peace,
Young and loving it