How is it not rational to base one's understanding of Islam on the teaching of Islam and the example of it's founder? Not to mention the attitude of various Muslims I encountered yesterday?

What WOULD be irrational is to say that "Islam is peace" when it is based on the vile acts of a murderer. (any brave but foolish soul care to debate this?)

It WOULD be irrational to say that "I can justify murdering political opponents because Jesus showed me by his example to do so"..THAT is irrational as it has no foundation in fact.

Much of the fuzzy thinking which goes on in this forum is based on poor chronology, lousy history and lack of research.

We can rationally say "Most muslims are peaceful" and be quite correct. We cannot say "Islam is peaceful"

We can rationally say "Most Christians are peaceful, though throughout history some claiming that name have acted despicably, violently and murderously"
We canNOT say "and they did so based on the example and teaching of Christ.

Yesterday at the Mind Body Spirit Festival in Melbourne I met the full range of Muslims.

Man 1 from Eritrea, delightful individual, open to discussion, warm hearted, reasonable and sincere.

Man 2 I suspect a Chechen (accent) Loud, aggressive, intolerant, unwilling to hear a syllable questioning Mohammad. Salafist/Wahabist in attitude.

Man 3 Australian born of Bosnian Muslim parents... age approx 20 "Smart alek".. quite comfortable with the idea of a man having wives and slave girls/sex toys based on Islam today.

So.. the issue of 'defending muslims' should not arise in Australia because the LAW protects them like everyone else.

VK3.. That was probably your best post ever :) *bingo* But I add a comment on one bit of it.

There is nothing 'crazy' about killing someone in the name of Islam, as Mohammad did just that.. many times over. It follows logically. Not so in the case of the Lord Jesus.

I would have to agree with PIN.

While the majority of muslims are peaceful, the majority of muslims are not taking the necessary action to purge their ranks of the fanatics and to isolate them.

While they are not guilty of commissioning the crimes, many are guilty of ommission in that they do not report or dob in the more extreme members of their community for whatever reason.

The result is that they are all branded with the same brush and stereotyped.

The peaceful majority can either close ranks with the community at large (with the fanatics excluded) and be accepted or with those of their faith and be excluded.

This is not my personal desire, but simply how I see the social dynamics playing out.

I often have to laugh when people philosophise about; OOO can’t up set the Terrorists, they might retaliate, - There seems to be an element of Useless idiot mantra about that; - and conflicts with the Useless Idiot –sphere of re- engineering of Social patterns that have become the very paradox to a functional society- and still enter the fields of a psychosis of total denial; -
It would be reasonable to hypothesise that if the idiot sphere were never allowed to introduce a toxin in the first instance, we would never have a need to find an antidote to that toxin; and best described as probability – never having, or discovering an antidote to counter the toxin introduced- then entering the frae, that consumes you, by acts of denial is the only antidote you have;-
Now the Question is; what does That Sound Like.

Dear Democratus,

I agree with you up to a point.

Yes, the peaceful majority of Muslims should
close ranks with the rest of the communities
in which they live and condemn the actions
of these fundamentalists. But we have to take
responsibility for our own actions as well in
the West.

The military actions that we've implemented to date
according to the experts, are not the answer.
They only end up in further conflict. And
bombing and killing people only forces them into
the arms of the jihadists. This has been going on
for decades.

As Imrah Khan pointed out on Andrew Denton,
education and the provision of social services
would help far greatly than bombs and guns.
Most of the Islamist as poor, their wealth from
oil has only benefited a select minority.

Financially assisting the tribes-people in Afghanistan
for example, would enable them to deal with the
taliban themselves. Western intrusion is not welcome.
Here or anywhere else in the Arab countries or the
Middle East.

We can't just go on interfering in people's lives, and
then expect them to succumb to our western way of thinking
and not react negatively to us.

Democritus,
The problem is that the 'moderate' muslims are too scared to take on the extremes. The extremes are more than we think and they are quite willing to kill their own just to get their way and keep the others in line. Examples everywhere of that.

Keysar mentions abuse of women!
What about forced marriages? isn't that rape and abuse. In Islam a wife cannot refuse her husbands desires and must obey, so there is not rape in marriage, she has to comply.

In Cairo recently, a leading female lawyer advocated on TV that the threat of rape was permissable 'resistance' She said Israeli girls and women were fair game for Arabs. I cannot imagine a highly educated woman anywhere saying such things. Its giving a green light to young males.

The problems muslim women are having here with divorce is that our law grants a divorce but this is not recognised by their religion. The ex-husband turns up at her place and demands his sexual rights and she must comply. Thats rape!

What about the girl, in Somalia, stoned to death because she reported she had been raped, or the girl in Iraq that married a non muslim and was stoned to death. Also in Iraq, a Swedish citizen, shot in the head in a 'honor killing' because she refused to submit to a forced marriage. Violence is normal part of the culture

The lists go on and on.

Banjo
Arguing by specific examples simply devolves into a contest of examples inevitably resulting in more heat than light. Consider how many Christian females get raped by Christian males who then get away with it. Also remember the institutionalized victimization of the Jenna 6. Do we then paint all Christians with these appalling events? Do we blame all Christians ?

What is missing in this debate is that these perpetrators of this obscenity are individuals regardless of what religion they CLAIM to follow.

Polycarp resorts to Google searches of Islamic documents to make his idiosyncratic position. In truth this approach too has its fatal flaws in that there are equally highly contentious quotations in the Bible it’s all in the individuals’ interpretation.

In practice both religions have a range of the followers who span from the sublime to the positively psychotic. The psychotic ends are so inclined because of personal issues and would be psychotic regardless of their religion. In short a terrorist “Muslim” (sic) would still be a terrorist “Christian” (sic).

It isn’t a matter of me being an apologist for “Muslims” simply because there is nothing to apologize for. They are no more responsible for aberrant rabid religious psychopaths anymore than “Christians”.

Both religions are tools much like a gun the carnage it does is clearly down to INDIVIDUAL’S (ab)use. Likewise an individual who is inclined to murder can do so with a humble pencil .