“…others seek to paint Islam as the greatest threat to contemporary society.”

It’s militant Muslims, themselves, who do this, and it’s so-called ‘moderate’ Muslims who do nothing to change our opinions of them.

Don’t worry about Daniel Pipes and others like him; the attitudes and intentions of Islam are plain to see, even for people who have never read a word written by intellectuals about Islam.

Muslims in the West are their own worst enemies. In its present form, Islam is definitely incompatible with democracy.

This freelance scribbler has nothing new to offer: he even makes the same old mistake of classing anti-Islam as ‘racism’

Divid and gibo. I was all wrong in thinking that religion was\is destroying mankind! What was I thinking.

I think Id better run down and pick a side.lol

Dude Mustafa

Dude, one minor US journalist does not a "mainstream" make. You would do well to listen to the racist bile that spews forth from the Arab world 24/7. It has become like poisoned muzak pumped through the immature minds of the hundreds of millions raped by religion.

The large numbers of Moslems in Europe is certainly creating very complex problems, to say the least.

And yes Pipes would be very much at home in the 1984 Ministry of "Truth"---as its director even.

Meanwhile I came across this superb essay in my travels around the internet yesterday. I was not browsing on the topic.

Please check out SCAPEGOAT Islam.

http://correspondences-martin.blogspot.com/2008/03/scapegoat-islam.html

I would like to draw your attention to the post by Graham Young on Keysar Trad's article, also published today:

"I was approached by Keysar to publish a response to Bronwyn Winter's article, and I was happy to do so. Whatever anyone's personal views of him are, he has gone to the trouble to engage in this debate, and I think deserves to be treated on the merits of his arguments. If you want to insult him, that says more about you than it does about him.

"It gets difficult to convince people to write for OLO if posters are just going to call them names. If this thread doesn't pick-up its act we will start deleting any responses that are even vaguely a flame. Some of the above are perilously close to being just that, and perhaps cross the line - we have that under consideration at the moment."
Posted by GrahamY, Friday, 9 May 2008 12:12:14 PM

I would just like to point out that his comment goes for all threads including this one.
Susan Prior - editor

1. Hate speech or propaganda is used frequently by all sides in War or Confrontation. As a insulting names. Gocernments do it brainwash the people.

2. Isalm AND Christianity have committed many atrocities over the centuries to each other, but largely against the Jews. In the latter case enthniv cleaning was used to clear the debts or the popes and monarchary on the continent. [The Vhristian Knights Templar were killed by Papal edict under false accusation, because they operated the world's first transnation enterprises and become too rich.

3. Mohammed needed to unit people as did Moses. The Persians and fundamentalist Christians could be seen a common enermy.

4. Islam, Judaism and Christrian all place significance on profits. Islam recocognizes Abraham and Jesus as significant figures inn history and religion.

5. Christians are respected as "people of The Book"

6. When I have spoken with Arab university students, they say they are not against Christianity but, opposed to England cutting the Middle East into peices, in the 1940s.

7. Factions in Islam are based on quarrels over genaeology. For Christians, it is interpretation of obscure texts that don't translaten well into Vulgat Latin or Koine Greek. The motives are often political not religious.

8. Spain is very significant in the cross-transfer of technology between Islam and Christianity. The Muslims generally were the more advanced and presumably understood the higher Attic Greek, whilst we in the West dealt with a cruel Catholic Church, Feifdoms and a Dark Ages.

9. Hard the Chinese Mophists not been supresses and more contact sustained with China. China would have left both the Middle East and the West behind. Pethaps, the Great Dovergence would have occured in 1360 not 1760. hmmm?

10. To understand a religion one needs go back to the first decades of its founding, rather than the Lore and imaginings afterwards.