Which "certain ideology" traps Muslims? Wahabbism? Salafism? Sufism, perhaps (most of which pre-dates those fundies)? If you just mean - essentially, lazily and indiscriminately - "Islam" as the trapping device, does that mean 85% of the largest Muslim-majority nation Indonesia is "totalitarian" by default, or are such people merely predisposed to being totalitarian by being Muslim, but somehow deficient or even transgressive by not realizing Islam's "totalitarian nature"?

Is Indonesia's mainly Muslim leadership just not really Muslim either because it either fails to enact, or even opposes, totalitarianism in practice? Are they not really Muslims because they initiate and sustain democratic processes at all levels (as sometimes done centuries earlier at local levels among many pre-colonial Muslim Indonesians)? And what of the role played by many Indonesian Islamic political parties? Does their generally corresponding complicity in non- or anti-totalitarianism actually disqualify them too from being considered properly "Islamic"?

Or, like the more ethno-/"race"-minded Islamophobes, do you believe that the largest Muslim-majority nation - Indonesia - cannot be really "Muslim" because it is not "Arab" (and despite widespread mastery of the relevant classical Arabic)? Such judgement would confuse many in Iran, Turkey, Nigeria and Bangladesh too, for example.

So which is it? Are most Muslims "like a hopeless addict to their drug" or just "trapped, innocent victims" to be pitied and "liberated" as in Iraq War propaganda? You've insisted repeatedly that any Muslim leaders - "the clerics" - must be power-hungry totalitarian fiends or demons, among other things. Would that judgement cover Muslim politicians in Indonesia too, for example (ex-president Gus Dur fits both labels "cleric" and "politician")?

The only thing that resembles a monolith here is "Islamophobia": a dark, ugly, awkward structure built on a foundation of various irrationalities, but all of them propping the same tower of hatred, ignorance, arrogance and alienation.

You were correct on your first point about the supposed "Islam trap": "it would be irrational to dislike Mr and Mrs Average Muslim". And that is exactly how your patronizing caricatures of Muslims and Islam read: irrational, hence Islamophobic vitriol.

'Which "certain ideology" traps Muslims? Wahabbism? Salafism? Sufism, perhaps (most of which pre-dates those fundies)? If you just mean - essentially, lazily and indiscriminately - "Islam" as the trapping device, does that mean 85% of the largest Muslim-majority nation Indonesia is "totalitarian" by default, or are such people merely predisposed to being totalitarian by being Muslim, but somehow deficient or even transgressive by not realizing Islam's "totalitarian nature"?'

All forms of Islam are totalitarian to the individual in that Islam (if practised properly) effects every last facet of someones life. Any true Muslim hands over their minds and their bodies to the clerics who interpret the orthopraxis of the Koran + Hadith.

All forms of Islam are totalitarian in the political sense. Islam seeks to makes itself the prime ideology of the State such that all political and judicial systems are subserviant to the clerics who interpret the Koran + Hadith.

Anyone non-Muslim who has travelled to Indonesia or any other State dominated by Islam will feel suffocated because the religion has left the private sphere and dominates the public sphere. Public discourse inevitably revolves around whether the peoples behaviour corresponds to the dictates of the clercs who interpret the Koran + Hadith.

Yes, all States currently dominated by the Islamic religion are monolithic and totalitarian just like the various European fascist states of the 1930's - every public system is geared to serving the central ideological dogma.

So now you claim omniscience, claiming to know how every non-Muslim visitor feels when in Indonesia. Indeed, you claim predictive certainty as if knowing not only how they DO feel, but how they WILL feel too. That's not just patronizing, but very silly.

And just who are these omnipotent clerics you keep going on about? Is that a contract they draft when Muslims hand over their "minds and bodies"? That smacks of some dark de Sade or S&M fantasy: you should get it checked out.

And if these "cleric"/bad guys are so absolutely powerful, how come so many of them get slammed into jail by secular authorities (as in Indonesia), especially when some of them may be accused of inciting inter-religious hatred? Now there's an idea: "jail for those who incite inter-religious hatred" (steer yourselves clear of Indonesia Islamophobes)...

It now seems yet clearer just who is totalitarian-minded, and weighed under some mental monolith of sorts; that's how irrational fears and hatreds work on people's minds. For this latest Islamophobic contribution we can redefine the phenomenon to: "hysterical Islamophobic hyperbole".

'And if these "cleric"/bad guys are so absolutely powerful, how come so many of them get slammed into jail by secular authorities (as in Indonesia), especially when some of them may be accused of inciting inter-religious hatred? Now there's an idea: "jail for those who incite inter-religious hatred" (steer yourselves clear of Indonesia Islamophobes)...'

The Muslim minority group Ahmadiyah would think you delusional mil-observer.

Last year the 'Indonesian Ulemas Council made up of the usual array of clerical nutters heaped so much pressure on Yudhoyono's government that they placed an official ban on the "deviant sect". Such a ban was bound to happen without too much fuss as only 6 mainstream religions are offically legal in Indonesia anyway. The Muslims of Indonesia aren't that tolerant.

But appeasing the IUC does not seem to be making life easier for non-Mulsims and "deviant" Muslims in Indonesia. The Jakata Post wrote this headline recently;

'Religious intolerance getting worse, says report'

...... “The increase is spurred by the rising persecution against the Jamaah Ahmadiyah by Islamic organizations to pressure the government to issue a presidential decree banning the minority sect,” the report said.

Last year, the government issued a joint ministerial decree forbidding Ahmadiyah from spreading its religious teachings, bowing to pressure from extremist groups that had attacked its followers, their mosques and houses across the country.

Out of the 265 incidents, the institute recorded 367 violations against freedom of religion and faith.

“Of the 367 violations, the state was involved in 188 cases of violence both by ‘commission and omission’,” Hendardi said.

The report said police were involved in 121 cases of religious intolerance, regents and mayors
in 28 cases while 52 others involved courts and regional legislative councils.

“What is worrying is that more individuals and unidentified groups launched sporadic religious attacks, which reached 91 cases last year,” Hendardi said.

The report blamed the radical Islamic Defender Front (FPI) and the Indonesian Ulama Council (MUI) as the main actors in the religious violence.....

http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2009/01/14/religious-intolerance-getting-worse-says-report.html

As Hitchens rightly claims - 'religion poisons everthing.'

Q: Why does the west still refuse asylum to oppressed Ahmadiyah followers who strangely incorporate a Greco-Roman “Jesus” prophet? ;-)
A: In the hope that they can still serve to either destabilize or, at least, act as proxy agents for their masters.

And more rubbish posing as insight into Indonesian politics. Clerics never pressured SBY et al into banning Ahmadiyah: submissions by such bodies as MUI simply follow the “usual channels” in those cases. SBY, his senior ministers and army colleagues know exactly what they're dealing with in Ahmadiyah. And if any clerics truly try to “pressure” those guys, such clerics will soon feel direct pressure from bayonets, or less direct pressure via street thugs' machetes.

The liberalist "tolerance" mantra just doesn't work: as I explained elsewhere on OLO, it's as mealy-mouthed as most middle-class euphemisms, but with the added stench of hypocrisy ("We 'tolerate'/put up with the catholic family renting in our street, but we stigmatize them and their church, deny them work, get the cops to harass them", etc. "Tolerance": another fake virtue for those who make their art from nastiness and bigotry, but without the guts to express it openly - a filter for all kinds of hatred, including Islamophobia.

“Tolerance” evokes the same mentality as that silly distinction “African-American”, held by pretentious snobs as a meaningfully important term, while “n|gg*r” or even “black American” are deemed racist! The essential meanings – and the intrinsic discriminatory concepts – are identical.

But on Ahmadiyah itself: Indonesia's conservative and protective approach to its own established religions is a healthy stance of self-defence and self-respect, like Chinese responses to the western-based, billionaire-sponsored Falun Gong cult. Ahmadiyah in Indonesia isn't some natural growth like bamboo: Indonesian nationalists know the threat it poses by potentially corroding a great portion of local identity and sowing division, distrust and inter-religious hatred.

So, I'm under no delusion or illusion about Ahmadiyah, Saudi-branded Wahabbist evangelism, Al Arqam, Falun Gong, the Dalai Lama, or any other religious infiltration sponsored deliberately to destabilize countries whose independent sovereignty still defies imperialist domination and world enslavement.

'And more rubbish posing as insight into Indonesian politics. Clerics never pressured SBY et al into banning Ahmadiyah: submissions by such bodies as MUI simply follow the “usual channels” in those cases. SBY, his senior ministers and army colleagues know exactly what they're dealing with in Ahmadiyah. And if any clerics truly try to “pressure” those guys, such clerics will soon feel direct pressure from bayonets, or less direct pressure via street thugs' machetes.'

Wrong yet again mil-observer;

'Indonesians Want Ahmadiyyah Ban'

http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?c=Article_C&cid=1203759199644&pagename=Zone-English-News/NWELayout

'But on Ahmadiyah itself: Indonesia's conservative and protective approach to its own established religions is a healthy stance of self-defence and self-respect, like Chinese responses to the western-based, billionaire-sponsored Falun Gong cult. Ahmadiyah in Indonesia isn't some natural growth like bamboo: Indonesian nationalists know the threat it poses by potentially corroding a great portion of local identity and sowing division, distrust and inter-religious hatred.'

Your gross hypocrisy in the above paragraph is mind-blowing. Somehow, it is OK for Muslims to use threat and intimidation to protect 'local identity' but then you complain and whinge when non-Muslims like myself use peaceful arguments to uphold their secular ideals and challenge the mania and delusion of monotheism.

It is Muslims like yourself that justify such criticism of Islam. Take a good look in the mirror.