I work with several Muslim women and share my suburb with a large immigrant Muslim community. It is precisely this contact with Islam which has persuaded me to convert from garden-variety leftist apology for Islam to active Islamophobia (for want of a better word).

What I find most disquieting is that you're right, Bennie - Muslims live like the rest of us, doing normal things and abiding by the law. The only difference is that they enthusiastically look forward to the day when you and I are murdered or subjugated so that our heathen wickedness can be replaced with Sharia law.

Primitive thought and integration with a modern society aren't mutually exclusive (as the Catholic church regularly demonstrates). The muslim women I work with are quite open about it. They respect their western colleagues for who we are and the work we do, but God requires that they have at least six children each in order to conquer Australia and break the pact with Satan which has brought us so much decadent success. If that requires mass killings, they're quite comfortable with it: Islam requires total submission.

What amuses me most about this predictable Islamophobic feeding frenzy is that most participants have missed one of Qadri's more interesting points, which is that vilification of Islam and Muslims has become for some Westerners the acceptable expression of the same kind of misanthropic hatred that used to manifest as racism.

Since the open expression of racist ideas and sentiments has become unacceptable in mainstream society, Islamophobia - as trumpeted by Pipes et al and their fans - serves very well indeed to rationalise the same old visceral xenophobic antipathies. It's not irrelevant that people who are Muslim tend also to have brown skin, but the racists can now vent their odious spleens by insisting that they are merely criticising ideology when they engage in their relentless anti-Muslim rants.

Ironically, the viciousness of much of the current Islamophobic crusade in some sections of the media and blogosphere can probably be traced in part to political correctness - which forced the more extreme racists under their ideological rocks for a while, but from which they have emerged recently rebadged as Islamophobes. As such, they can voice their ideologies of hate without needing to use explicitly racist language.

MOVE.

“For Pipes “Islamism” represents the worst excesses of Islamic militant orthodoxy” –what is wrong?

Any religious orthodoxy on terms of sacrificing a routine to something super-divine is a threat to democracy and common law-that is why separating the church from society is a founding stone of any democracy.

Given a number of practising Muslims on a planet, their nationalism narrowed to and directed with religious shores is even a clear danger to less devoted followers than outer to Islam world is.

Sorry, Boaz, but your argument is completely circular. The sadness is that you don't understand why.

>>...the verse I cited is not obscure, it is KEY.<<

To you, it clearly is "key", I cannot for one moment doubt that, since you thrust it down our throats at every single opportunity, and sometimes even without the opportunity being presented.

What you cannot understand is that simply because you tell me that this particular verse is key, or that particular verse is to be ignored, or the other particular verse is to be construed literally, or yet another only as metaphor, it doesn't necessarily follow that it is true.

It is just your opinion, Boaz. One opinion, among many opinions, as to the accuracy, veracity, credibility and validity of ancient texts.

And viking13, you keep missing the point. So often, I feel it must be deliberate.

>>I certainly don't see any similarities between the positions of Jews pre-WWII and Muslims now<<

This is irrelevant, totally, to the point.

The actions to which I drew your attention was not the target of the vilification, but those of the vilifiers themselves. Their tactics. Their use of a perceived common threat to elevate emotional response in people less able to understand that they were being manipulated.

>>Mosely's campaign was against an imagined enemy<<

Nonsense. To the out-of-work Londoner the enemy, as described by Mosley, was real, and visible.

Boaz, you're ducking and weaving again.

>>he asks 'what is the difference between what we are quoting from the Quran and Hadith..and what the POPE said? ANSWER.. 'very little' SO...WHAT?<<

So, on the one hand you have the leader of a religion advocating wholesale slavery of religious enemies, on the other... much the same.

Which is hardly deserving of a "so what", given that Christians tended to use the Pope's authority to kill and maim Muslims in the name of their God.

By their actions shall they be judged.

Dear Predictable Pericles.. after 'SO... WHAT? came.. "now we must ask the ALL important question"

I'll leave you with that one.

I am curious about one thing you said though. When you quoted Mosely, you implied that when a group of people who are specifically working against the state....that this is ok? You just outlined 'sedition' and then implied criticism and condemnation of those who opposed it... weird....very weird indeed. Next time choose more appropriate quote.

PASSY.. mate.. the time has arrived :) seriously, you have a very unbiblical view of what is a Christian.

You are equating 'Christian' with 'Western Culture'. I'm sure a lot of westerners, if asked 'What religion are you?' would respond "Hmm Christian".

If I can offer this perspective, ... to be Christian is summarized in Pauls words in Galatians.

"I am crucified with Christ, it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me" Ch2 v 20

Jesus called on humanity to do 2 things.

Repent... (from all known sin)
Believe...(in the Gospel/Himself) (and commit ones life to Christ)

Doing those things, makes one a 'Christs-one' a child of God.

Please try to remember this when discussing the War in Iraq etc.

BUSH?...goood grief.. his Christianity has the appearances of being as real as the next vote. Either that or.... he is such a dumb dumb that he simply does not understand ANY religion..particularly Islam.
God knows his heart that's for sure.

But please don't equate "Christians" with the War effort. I don't see any crosses except perhaps on Ambulances.

regards
BD

CJ.. off to the libary mate :) some reading about the expansion of Islam is in order, then you can scurry out from under 'your' rock with a new informed perspective.