About giving "love".Anybody can do that without religion!
The point is NOT to expect it back. That ONLY makes you a great person. Project love to Gibbo so he will feel it, and if anyone wants to put the christian/muslim/jewish etc. spin on it that'll be their misconception.

Dear Boazy,

Of course I understand where you're coming from. I understand only too well. But I find it rather tedious to argue with you about it all the time, and your patronising attitude doesn't help.

As I've stated ad nauseaum - there are bad people in all religions.
I'm sure that if I was to put in the time and effort - I could find
sites that would portray the ugly side of the Old Testament. If you look for 'ugliness' hard enough - you'll find it in anything.

Not all Muslims believe that the Qur'an is the literal and inerrant word of God, nor do all of them believe that Islam requires strict conformity to all the religious and moral precepts in the Qur'an. The character of Islamist movements varies greatly throughout the world -they are so complex and diverse.

Some Islamists resort to terrorism, and some do not. Some espouse leftist political and economic programs, borrowing ideas from Marxism and other varieties of socialism, while others are more conservative.

Another important factor is the Islamists' resentment of Western political and economic domination of the Middle East. But I won't go into all that here - this information is available through - Encyclopedia Britannica - online. If you're interested you can look it up.

As I wrote in my previous post - I don't want to keep on having arguments with you. So not discussing things is the only recourse open to me - because discussion does not achieve anything - to me it's an exercise in futility - and I'm tired.

I also have a copy of The Jerusalem Bible at home - so I don't need to have the Bible preached to me.

Cheers.

Well said Foxy.

Look, boaz, allow me another analogy which portrays the situation.

Lets say there was horrendous crime being perpetrated by an Italian mafia, somewhere in Australia.

It's fair enough to condemn the acts. You can even go and whip up a lynch mob against them, by highlighting your little pieces of youtube, perhaps outlining some brutal acts carried out by Italian gangsters.

You can get your lynch mob together with a rallying cry "yes! Time to stop the crime! Lets go clean out these mobsters who are threatening our livelihoods!"

You get the crowd all riled up and ready to go get the mobsters, but before you do, instead of saying "let's go get these mafia bosses" you then start yelling "we're all here! Great! Let's go turf out any Italian Australians! Look at what they're doing! Yaah! Get em!"

Everyone has halted behind you. They're going... "uh... what? Are you nuts?"

Yes, there are ugly regimes, ugly beliefs, ugly people.

There's a BILLION muslims. Most of them aren't any of the above.
You can scaremonger all you want, but they come in all kinds, just like Christians. Okay, there haven't been as many violent acts against civilians committed by christians in recent times but then again, if you consider the number of people in the muslim world that have died at the hands of the west - be it intentional or otherwise - you can see why there is anger, even if violence against civilians is never justified.

And you know what exacerbates it - imagine if in this Italian Australian scenario, there was some ethnic group that hated Italians - think the serb/croat divide.
What would you think, if the person whipping up this hysteria belonged to a group that was the prime opponent of this section of the public - i.e. your fundamentalist christian view vs muslims.

Well... I call this real progress.. Foxy and TRTL...

1/ Foxy CAN actually see where I'm coming from. (*phew*)

2/ TRTL has a good handle on the dangers of 'whipping up public sentiment'

Ok.. lets see where both of you allow stererotyping to control your thinking.

Foxy first.. "but there are bad people in all religions" agreed.

But the point I've also been trying to make..and yes.. ad nauseum, is that the religion itself is evil.. most of its followers are fine.
Ananda Marga=bad
Islam=bad
Children of God=bad
Buddhism=no threat
Hindusim=can be ok but much potential for bad also.
Zoroastrianism=No threat
Sikhism=dangerous.
Sufism (Mystical Islamic offshoot)= No threat.
Bahai=No threat.

Hitler didn't start to squash the Jews immediately. He waited till he had power.. but all along.. the phrases in Mein Kampf were always there..and to an astute observer, would be seen for what they really were.

Foxy if you couple the sentiments of that Masud site.. which connects 'Allah's curses' to real world punishment..and then you connect that to Surah 9:30... and add to that the existence of Israel now.. and the unending stream of anti Israel propoganda.. you have a volatile mix which is just waiting to go off.. kaaaaBOOOM..
If I'm wrong in this analysis...I'm happy to be shown my error.. in fact rather than emotion.

TRTL.. The point you make.. is why I've been advocating change at the 'policy' level... if you don't tweak your policy on many levels such as

-Unity rather than Multiculturalism and diversity.
-Migration controls to ensure would be migrants understand OUR laws and committ to obey them OVER and above their own religion...

I think you let your imagination run a bit wild there :) this is OLO not outback Kentucky

Perhaps.. I'm trying to highlight REASONS why we need to examine and change policy...to avoid such 'lynch mobs' No..not perhaps.. it IS the reason :)

Then..have we come full circle ? Will foxy now say "tolerance and understanding" and will you simply re-state other arguments?

boaz, I'm simultaneously bemused and disgusted by your religion stereotyping. This is at the core of our disagreement.

You say the Islamic religion is evil.

Wrong. Totally wrong, and your faith makes you hopelessly biased.

The rational answer, is that there are only good or evil people, from every religion on the planet.
They can commit good acts or bad acts.

And to reinforce a hopelessly labored point you're just not getting, there are any manner of interpretations.

Your OT god is ugly and I wouldn't have a bar of anything to do with it. I'd have no hestitation calling it evil.

It's evil. Torturing Job was an evil act of your god, but you refuse to admit that. Frankly, I think that's a cowardly act to justify the bits of your faith that don't quite fit, but I suppose you need to do that in order for it to seem reasonable.

So.

You won't judge your god's actions - just everybody elses.

You'll call them evil, but you refuse to condemn the torture of Job, an innocent man.

And to think you're in some kind of position to judge the morality of these makes me think you should just add whatever brand of Christian yours is to them mix, tick it off as evil too, and just be done with it.

But that would be just as dumb.

A concept is just a concept. Only the people that carry it out can be good or evil - and most of the world's billion muslims aren't evil. In fact, most of them are a lot less 'evil' than the last post makes you appear to be.

BOAZ David I have never felt the open dislike for you that some have, but you highlight your weakness.
See while I believe in no God I admire much of the rules to live by man put into those Holy books.
My question to you went unanswered.
While you throw bricks at all Muslims you refuse to look in your own backyard.
A RADICAL, FUNDAMENTALIST CHRISTIAN, has been seen here claiming such idiotic things that it in a bizarre way defames those from his side of the road as much as anyone.
Your concerns are limited to one religion yet you let your team down by not telling us your God is not like that.