Bushbasher I loved '...a pox on all their houses'! Lol.

Postings from Taner, Stevenlmeyer and DavidF all just go to prove that there have been numerous instances in our world's history that violence and degredation has been perpetrated on others in the name of religion.

No one religion can claim they are above all that violence/terrorism and are the one true religion.
Better to work together to promote a peaceful world, and to rid ourselves of all terrorists, no matter what religion or culture they hail from.

CJ Morgan:

I didn't attack Orhan Cicek at all. I said if all Muslims were like him, there'd be no problem, and no need for me or anyone else to badmouth Islam. I assume from his name that he's Turkish (as is Nursel Guzeldeniz). I like Turkey and Turks. Loved Istanbul and look forward to seeing more of the country soon. Although Turkey put the fear of God into western Europe with the sieges of Vienna in 1529 and 1683, and the Battle of Lepanto (1571), its loss of the Caliphate and embracement of a secular separation of religion and state since Attaturk has engendered civilized relations between its current form of Islam and the outside world. We can live with it, generally, in the sense of not feeling assailed.

The current principal of the East Preston Islamic College in Melbourne is a Turk, and appears to have redeemed the standing of that college in the general community, since the disgracefully divisive desecration incident of December 2006 and subsequent replacement of the former principal.

I have no problem at all with Sufiism. Former President Abdurahman Wahid (Gus Dur) of Indonesia, a Sufi, maintained civilized relations with us.

But as other posters have pointed out, Sufiism is under attack widely from within Islam. I wish it was the general shopfront of the religion, but unfortunately it isn't.

I am currently about four fifths of the way through Ayaan Hirsi Ali's book Infidel, her autobiography of her upbringing and life in Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, Kenya and then her experience in Holland. What she says about Islam and the attitudes of its devotees toward the Dutch and the West generally is chilling. It's a very sad story, and her views on the complacency of the "liberals" toward the creation of cultural and religious ghettos are compelling.

I don't think Orhan Cicek would disagree with her.

David F:

You say "Jesus was neither the founder of Christianity nor a Christian... Other people founded a new religion in his name."
Didn’t he say "Upon this rock I will build my church” ?

“The evil doctrine, the armed forces at the disposal of those professing the doctrine, and the SYMPATHISERS (M.E.) with the doctrine in other lands ( e.a) constitute one united threat which must be met by force”. Edmund Burke, writing on the French revolution and of the English citizens who supported it either in word or deed.

In a battle between FLAMING fundamentalists and mute moderates, who do you think is going to win. Irshad Manji Muslim writer

The above two quotes apply to all the naive simpletons of this thread who search in vein for moderate Muslims in a religion that is irreversibly replete with hate against all infidels. And the comparison of moral equivalence they attempt to make between Christianity and Islam shows their prodigious ignorance of history and that they are fugitives from reality. Christianity never threatened another civilization with FANATICAL suicide bombers, it's Islam that does so in an era of nuclear weapons and WMD. It's this that distinguishes Christian fanatics from Muslim fanatics and the great dangers that the latter carry and hide around their midriffs which are incomparable.

The hackneyed terms of 'Islamophobes'and 'Muslim haters’ that the Islam sympathisers use to discredit their opponents is a defence reaction on their part for their inveterate doltishness and inanity which bars them from the course of reason.

http://kotzabasis11.wordpress.com

I have written some of my own thoughts on this in the discussion "Terrorism arrests" at http://larvatusprodeo.net/2009/08/04/terrorism-arrests/#comment-818161

It should be noted that the media has quietly acknowledged that any notion that a guerrilla group fighting on the other side of the world would seek to advance its own cause by launching terrorist attacks in this country, is likely to be nonsense. In “Militant Warlords combing diaspora for recruits at home” in the Australian of 6 August at http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25890134-31477,00.html, Catherine Philp writes:

"IF the Islamists arrested in Tuesday’s pre-dawn raids were plotting to storm Australian army bases, it is unlikely al-Shabaab told them to do it."

Further along, she writes:

"What al-Shabaab cannot do is stop the foreign fighters it has radicalised in its training camps from returning home to attack domestic targets in the name of Islam."

I would suggest there is considerable difference between this country being the target of a coordinated international terrorist campaign and a small group of deluded fools at their own initiative planning to launch a terrorist attack, assuming that is found to be true.

See also "Al-Shabaab denies link to Aust suspects" at http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/08/07/2648501.htm

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I would suggest people also familiarise themselves with the facts about 9/11 and other 'false flag' terrorist attacks of recent years (see, for example, http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=2166&page=83).

If the media can make the three unprecedented engineering disasters -- the 'collapses' of the WTC Twin Towers and the 'collapse' of WTC 7 -- which all occurred on 11 September 2001, appear to be the consequence of two aircraft crashing into buildings that were designed to easily withstand such impacts, then they would be capable of almost anything.

People should also know about the the infamous US Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group (P2OG - their acronym, not mine, BTW) at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proactive,_Preemptive_Operations_Group

Its tactics were to include the launching of "secret operations aimed at 'stimulating reactions' among terrorists ... for instance, prodding terrorist cells into action and exposing themselves to 'quick-response' attacks by U.S. forces."

Should we preclude the possibility that the accused may have been 'prodd(ed)' 'into action' by a group like the P2OG?

Sudanese reformer Mahmoud Taha was hung by the Islamic government (in 1985) of Sudan under pressure from the Muslim World League, a body that represents most of the Muslim-majority countries of the world. It is funded by the Saudi – Arabian government and aims to promote shariah law.

http://static.rnw.nl/migratie/www.radionetherlands.nl/currentaffairs/region/africa/sud060118-redirected

A group of progressive secular Muslims came up with a new movement to reform Islam (in 2007).

“We are secular Muslims, and secular persons of Muslim societies. We are believers, doubters, and unbelievers, brought together by a great struggle, not between the West and Islam, but between the free and the unfree.

We demand the release of Islam from its captivity to the totalitarian ambitions of power-hungry men and the rigid strictures of orthodoxy.

We say to Muslim believers: there is a noble future for Islam as a personal faith, not a political doctrine;”

http://kpr37.newsvine.com/_news/2009/06/13/2927117-reformation-of-islam-the-st-petersburg-declaration-institute-for-the-secularization-of-islamic-society-

Muslims don’t take them seriously and have have aligned with the Muslim World League. The agenda of the MWL is to implement shariah law through jihad; non-Muslims have only one choice to deal political Islam, destroy it at its source.

The US uses drones effectively to bomb the “religious” leaders and advocates of political Islam in Pakistan. The Nigerian Army does not hesitate to blast the murderous Islamists hiding in mosques. The West should put mosques and Islamic religious schools under strict surveillance.

Dear Glorfindel: We really don't know what Jesus said. We only know what is in the New Testament which was written years after his death. The miracles are obviously fairy tales, and we don't know how much of the other material is valid. He is a figure who may be completely mythical.

The statement "Upon this rock I will build my church” could easily have been put into his mouth after his death by the founders of the religion created in his name.

Dear Themistocles,

Islam did not have the first suicide bombers. The Tamils of Sri Lanka first used that tactic in blowing themselves up having bombs strapped around their waist.

In the Battle of Midway that turned the tide in the Pacific Americans flew their planes carrying torpedoes into Japanese warships. They were also suicide bombers, and I am grateful to those men for their sacrifice. They are heroes to me because I favour what they were fighting for. However, those they blew up were heroes to the other side.

The Man he Killed

by Thomas Hardy

"Had he and I but met
By some old ancient inn,
We should have sat us down to wet
right many a nipperkin!

"But ranged as infantry,
And staring face to face,
I shot at him as he at me,
And killed him in his place.

"I shot him dead because -
Because he was my foe,
Just so; my foe of course he was:
That's clear enough; although

"He thought he'd list, perhaps,
Off-hand like - just as I -
Was out of work - had sold his traps -
No other reason why.

"Yes: quaint and curious war is!
You shoot a fellow down
You'd treat if met when any bar is,
Or help to half-a-crown.

My reason tells me that Muslims are human and can be appealed to in the same way as any other humans.

Being a hater whether one is an Islamophobe or any other kind of hater discredits a person