No mil-observer. I call it as I see it. And I and know an insane ideology and an insane person when I see them.

Only fruitcakes talk to angels called "Gabriel", bang 9 year girls, shag their adopted son's wife (granted, Zaynab was a looker) and decapitate POW's. (The list goes on....)

And only the brainwashed would consider Mohammed a suitable point of departure for a world-view and civilisation.

The non-brainwashed have every right to be extremely sceptical. This is as obvious as the nose on your face.

As for the evidence that Islam does in fact turn (some) well balanced people into angry frustrated paranoids - I offer exhibit A - you.

Yeh, stuff the Uni banter, this religion is killing people. and not just one or 2 but thousands. It's not ok.

NIL-observer

Islam, the Self-Perpetuating Tool of Arab Imperialism is the concept from a jihadist turned apostate, Anwar Shaikh.

“Anwar Shaikh was born on June 1, 1928 in Gujrat, the then greater India. His family was extremely religious, which influenced him to follow Islam with passion. In 1947, India was in a process of independence from Britain, and Muslims and Hindus were in a civil war. At this time, Anwar Shaikh, a young Muslim zealot killed two Sikhs and one Hindu without any remorse. His religious conviction was akin to that of a typical Muslim Jihadist, of the sort we see today.”

He repented of what he did and became a Hindu.

http://www.islam-watch.org/AnwarSheikh/Islam-Arab-Imperialism7.htm

The enlighten Muslim would no longer be a Muslim but become secular, or an ex-Muslim like Dr. Mirza

“The Islamists and Mullahs told me: ‘it is the sacred duty for the Muslims to kill kafirs. Hindus are kafirs therefore it is our duty to kill them.’ I asked him if it is written in the Qur’an or hadiths to kill Hindus. The Mullah replied: yes. At that time, it was not possible to verify the Mullah’s assertion since I did not understand a word of Arabic and there was no translated Qur’an available to me.”

http://www.islam-watch.org/SyedKamranMirza/Walking-Away-From-Islam.htm

Tang, in my previous two replies I wiped a dirty, bloody floor with your posts and their vitriolic attempts to debate issues around a regional Muslim culture, discussed in the wider context of this thread and its article. I appreciate that you probably feel uncomfortable about such surgical treatment of your posts, while your parents and/or others who paid for your education may feel even worse if they see the results here. Your latest response made no effort to counter my fine-sliced dissections of those various glib claims you made about Arab, Malaysian and Indonesian Islamic cultures. Therefore, your follow-up is really akin to just more anti-Muslim hate-spam (not that we haven't seen that before on OLO).

Yes, Tang, like your colleagues here, your own witless, reflexive posts are too kind to me. Your jibe “NIL-observer” was revealingly apt: it seems you meant that I observed the emptiness, the lack of argumentative substance, symbolized by your hatred and that of like-minded commentators. Of course, I could add that it's obviously a “One-Nil” win for my observations, but that would miss the fact that you also scored a devastating “own goal” by slagging Haslam in your first effort on this thread.

Islamophobes like Tang seem to relish and cherish tales of Muslim apostasy; that's probably because Islam often ranks as the world's fastest growing faith. Islamic trends run contrary to such western achievements as: demographic decrepitude; family atomization; gay marriage; voluntary childless marriage; no marriage; viagra-led divorce among the grey majority; late childbirth; and now the greatest economic crash in the history of imperialist usury.

Whether avowed Liberal “Humanists” (a sacred cliché) or card-carrying “born-again” fundy crusaders, Islamophobes are oblivious to the major, critical psychological irony of their deluded terrorism fairy tales and “clash of civilizations” fantasies. I refer here to the fact that the more Islamophobes displace attention from their own societies' degeneracy - by exaggerating and contriving some distant, alien, existential threats in Islam - the more they guarantee the demise of the very western societies and traditions which they claim to praise and uphold closer to home.

[cont.]

TR: why do you say that Islam's “final prophet” violated an underage girl? This seems to be another case which excites in you repeated dwelling and imagining on illicit sexuality. I understand rather that Koranic cases actually involved legal betrothals in a custodial sense, (“marriage” assumes consummation at any time) enacted like adoptions to protect females otherwise very vulnerable amid anarchic warfare, societal chaos, and such barbaric practices as slavery (especially in prostitution), and gender-determined infanticide. Those circumstances describe the origin and, I claim along with many Muslim feminists, the original historical context justifying Islamic polygamy.

Why must such argument mean “brainwashed”, whereas you imply a shattering revisionist's historical accuracy with your inflammatory and offensive accusations and vilifications? Or do you just have it on the reliable authority of inspired Islamophobes (Hitchens' mate Sir Salman “Scruffy” Rushdie perhaps)? Or does it just make you feel tough to know that you can spit the worst insults at many millions of peaceful people, while confident that you face no immediate consequences? Rather, it seems obvious that you mean such thin but shrill bravado to overcompensate for some deep, complex fear a.k.a. phobia.

But say hi to your mate Hitchens for me, if you get a word in between his drafts backing an illegal war – a war that would have got its prosecutors hanged in 1946 – and his more recent twists and turns over “torture”: a pompous narcissist no doubt. Your admiration there expresses not only deep hostilities and other frustration, but also some deep enjoyment of the kind of antagonism and cruelty that people like Hitchens inspire and promote. Remember: that death count exceeds one million now.

meredith: your comment echoes your sentiment on a recent OLO thread on Gaza i.e., “GO Israel!” What compels you to become cheerleader for ideologues whose response to offers of peace negotiations is: bombs, artillery and guided missiles into civilian-populated areas? Does your aggression come from the same source as TR's? Do you realize that your euphoric support for aggression compels corresponding spite for Islam, if not also for Arabs too (a la Tang)?

Most of the Middle Eastern Christians I speak to, who have immigrated here to Australia from many nations tell me they think Islam is THE PROBLEM for Muslims who in turn make problems for their fellow Christians. The few who say different are the ones I've never met, who appear on TV living in Lebanon and other places who betray their Christianity by putting the blame upon all religions thus being ungrateful to their parents and ancestors who put up with periodic massacres and forced Islamisation.