,In Truth, and demonstrated throughout their HIS-stories, both Islam and Secularism have as their ultimate goal, that of total world domination! We have seen this with Stalin and Mao and now with Islam. Secularism and Islam do have so much in common.

Mr Cicek,

Let me offer you a reality check. You may believe "Allah" transmitted the koran verbatim to Muhammad via an "angel". When I read the koran I start by wondering how the supposed creator of the universe could get so many details of "his" creation wrong.

As for the ahadith, Monty Python couldn't come up with anything more bizarre.

However if you choose to believe that a compendium of 7th Century codswallop is a message from the creator of the universe and that a seventh century Arabian warlord called Muhammad was a messenger from aforementioned creator that is your affair. I don’t care.

Get that?

I don’t CARE what you believe.

I respect your right to pollute your own mind with whatever filth you choose. I even respect your right to do dawa which means you have the right to persuade other people to pollute their minds with the same garbage.

But when you try and sell me the "religion of peace" myth I feel I have to respond. To me Islam is not some ethereal disembodied perfect religion.

ISLAM IS WHAT FLESH AND BLOOD MUSLIMS THINK, SAY AND DO.

And, when I look around the world, what is it I see Muslims doing?

Mostly I see them killing and oppressing other Muslims, especially those of the female persuasion. What is more they are doing so IN THE NAME OF ISLAM.

The Pakistani Taleban did not close girls' schools in the Swat valley in the name of secular humanism. They did it in the name of Islam.

Sunni's in Iraq do not bomb and kill Shia in the name of Presbyterianism. They do it in the name of Islam. Similarly Wahhabis oppress the Shia minority in Saudi Arabia in the name of Islam and because Shia happen to inhabit the part of the country in which the oil is.

When I look at what Muslims actually do I can only conclude that violence and oppression constitute a MAINSTREAM thread of contemporary Islam. Not the only thread; but definitely a mainstream thread.

The Middle East and Muslim countries have been invaded and controlled by western countries for many decades, one could say if it occurred in your own country, you would take umbrage and react.

The Middle East and Muslim countries have been invaded by western countries for many decades, one could say if it occurred in your own country, you would take umbrage and react.

Who is going to educate the educator? The author of the article engages in a litany of the good aspects of the Muslim religion but abhors identifying its bad aspects from which Muslim terrorism stems. All religions, including Christianity, are a mixture of the good and the bad based on fantasies and “dark forces.” That is why the reign of reason cannot find its throne in religion. All the great achievements of our contemporary Western civilization emanate from the fact that they were achieved against religion or by REFORMING religion. Muslims cannot liberate themselves from the “dark forces” of their own religion and achieve their own greatness without at least having their own religious REFORMATION.

Presently the deafening evidence is that jihadism and terror are incubated in the religious institutions and Madrasas of Islam and one can only “preserve’ one’s “objectivity” by realizing that this is Mosque-bred terror. The Australian newspaper reports today that three of the arrested would-be terrorists were regularly praying at the Preston Mosque in Melbourne where the ‘moderate’ Mufti of Australia presides. And the other incontrovertible fact is, unlike the claim of the author that “the problem of terror and crime...is an issue that the mainstream Muslim society strongly opposes,” that all the moderate streams of Muslim society are dry of any demonstrable opposition to acts of terrorism and seem to be merely the banks within which the terrorist stream moves along.

http://kotzabasis.wordpress.com

All religions are based on the axiom that it is reasonable and right to believe something without any evidence because you WANT to believe it. This is the core belief of Osama Bin Laden, of Pope Benny, of Ayatollah Khamenei, of the Archbishop of Canterbury. And as soon as you embrace that axiom you are at the same moral level as anyone with ANY irrational ideas whatsoever, from homeopathy to mass murder.

Osama and the Ayatollah's thugs sincerely believe they are carrying out the wishes of their God; and as long as you believe there is a God and that people have direct access to him, there is no way you can prove them wrong. Either you believe that God communicates his wishes or you don't: there is no middle ground. And if God is telling someone what to do, then why shouldn't that someone be Osama or the would-be local bombers? They believe it is, and -- until you renounce your faith and try reason -- you can't prove it isn't. You both have weird and unjustifiable beliefs: theirs just happen to be less socially acceptable than yours, but that doesn't make them any more wrong.

In fact all irrational beliefs are morally equivalent; embrace one and you lose the right to criticise others. This is why even the mildest faith is dangerous: because it legitimises ALL lunatic beliefs. Tolerance of religion is the sea that fundamentalists -- of all denominations -- swim in.

Richard Dawkins could tell Osama and the NSW bomb plotters why they are wrong: but until you renounce the absurdities of your religion you haven't got a leg to stand on.