West, You place religion as the reason and post blame for all peoples criminality. You've chosen religion as your personal nemesis. Sadly much of the reasoning and assertions regarding history in your last post isn't just wrong, I feel it is deliberately done. You do play at dungeons and dragons. You've created your own narrow dungeon and envision yourself as dragon slayer. In as much as BOAZ David refers to his religion, your post always seem to come around to religion.
An innocent from outer space may well deduce that all Earths problems could be the result of either the over zealous application of religious dogma or the very lack of religious adherence.
Balance or a state of homeostasis is the higher reward.

Hi Irf...
I'm hearing you... would you mind providing some documented reference to Danny Naliah's call ? Usually, in Christian-speak 'tearing down of strongholds' is in the spiritual sense. (it sure is in the New Testament)

[By the meekness and gentleness of Christ, I appeal to you—I, Paul, who am "timid" when face to face with you, but "bold" when away! 2I beg you that when I come I may not have to be as bold as I expect to be toward some people who think that we live by the standards of this world. 3For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. 4The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds.] II Cor 10:1-4

Lets not forget that Hitler used the 'Jesus, cleansing of the temple of money changers' as justification for slaughtering the Jews. Did he interpret it correctly ? nope. (Jesus was a Jew not a member of the Aryan master race)

Irf.. please don't apply Islamic concepts of religious position to Christianity. A person can be 'born' a Muslim (culturally, politically) but one can only be born AGAIN to be Christian.

Not all are like Pat Robertson.
(who I have personally taken to task by email over some of his comments)

IRAQ.. part of Gods plan ? Don't you believe in the Sovereignty of the Almighty ? "If Allah wills".... but the meaning of the Right about that would be that "God is not mocked, He is still sovereign", rather than specifically reflecting Christian values. Mankind still has free will you know.

Dutch Reformed justification of Aparthied ? Show me the Biblical references and we can discuss it. Same basis..context and correct interpretation.

You would need to link any of those other examples you used to the New Testament mate. Without that its like me blaming the murderous actions of one pack of chimps against another on Christianity.

I've just been reading this thread and some of the comments are pretty abusive, particularly of Irfan. You can disagree with someone without calling them names. This should especially be the case with one of our authors. If it wasn't for their dedication to discussing ideas this forum wouldn't exist and they deserve to be respected for that at the very least.

I'll be keeping a watch on this thread and any further abuse will just be deleted.

So many people making emphatic statements about what Islam is! Surely Islam is whatever Muslims believe it to be, rather than what non-Muslims claim it is.

Knowledge and understanding are the keys to fighting fear and hatred, which is why I enjoy reading Irfan’s articles so much (even when I don't entirely agree). My opinions were once more in line with some of the more extreme negative views expressed here; and some of Irfan’s past articles were in no small way responsible for bringing me back to a more reasonable view of things. While I’m not about to don the rose-tinted spectacles of Islamophilia, at least I hope to avoid the worst mistakes of Islamophobia.

And speaking of mistakes, I’ve realized I managed to mis-spell the names of both Sheik Hilali and Professor Israeli in my previous post. Ack! I hate it when I do things like that. Still, at least my errors were even-handed.

I go quiet on the weekends, having better things to do. West, you pretty much said what I was going to say - thank you. I was also going to say that my father was a terrorist; his area of activity was Germany and France in 1944 and '45. Fortunately we won, so he immediately was transformed from terrorist to hero!

The Japanese considered their kamikaze pilots to be the bravest of the brave - sacrificing their own lives for their cause. A cause which was increasingly apparently lost. I don't see how the word coward can sensibly be applied to someone who willingly gives up his life for his cause. Misguided, certainly! Extreminst, yes! But coward, no! As much as we hate their actions it is quite unproductive to say suicide bombers are cowards (although I would not necessarily argue against this use for people who leave bombs to explode later, the King David Hotel for example). Until we recognise this it will be very difficult to defeat muslim extremism, because to defeat them (and I fully support defeating them) we must first understand them.

It's kind of sad, that when a moderate muslim writes a pretty reasonable argument he's still attacked... people say that extremism in western societies is caused by isolation and being surrounded by people with extremist views.
Of course, there is the element of choice in the matter - though it doesn't look like it's easy for a muslim to express a view even remotely critical of a christian or western viewpoint without being lumped in with extremist Islam - which in the view of a number of OLO posters, seems to be the same anyway.
Just goes to show... extremism does cut both ways, even if it doesn't necessarily manifest in physical violence.

So, in attacking and excluding muslims from mainstream discourse, aren't we tacitly encouraging extremism via exclusion?

Thoughts anyone?