FH,

This is for you.

http://economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9433846

It is probably a very good book about early Arab (Muslim) conquests and probably written from an objective standard. I hope to read it. I love history.

J.

Pericles, get your head out of the sand. To warn of the dangers of a culture that is threatening Western ways of life is not denigrating it. Was the "Red Menace" scare purely an insult to the FSU?

During your time in Europe, you should have crossed over to England to witness Imams preaching hatred and sedition against the government that allows them to live there. I wonder how you would excuse that.

Once you have personally witnressed a bombing, Failed or otherwise, then you can comment on "the sheer banality of their incompetence".

Your belittling of the symptoms, "Cronulla, Sth_West Sydney, Refusal of Taxi's to take guide_dogs,alchohol (sic all)" , is pathetic, as symptoms lead to disease. How do you think the UK's disease started?

You don't see "Specifically 'Muslim' prayer halls at universities, Airports, special washing facilities,(USA)" to be particularly burdensome. Who's paying for these? Would a muslim country allow special non-muslim facilities? Did Afganistan allow the Buddha statues to remain?

With Crusades or Jihads the problem is active monotheism. Here, we have white haired guys bunkered down safely somewhere, creating creeds and doctrines and inciting thers, 18-25 year olds to fight to the death... Regarding Napoleon Bonaparte’s c.1800 incursion into Egypt, the Mameluke leadership serially recruited locals/peasants to fight Napoleon, while moving itself and the trained forces away from the front line. [Created casualities by attrition for the French, while keeping the leader safe and guarded.] Likewise, the Christian Popes kept potential usurpers in control by kings’ forces were off on crusade. Whether it is a call to Allah or a priest blessing the Hiroshima bomb, they are tarred with the same brush. Monotheism is dangerous.

The Christians were as bad as the Muslims when it came to massacres and cruelty , wherein I have provided many examples to just the claim in earlier threads: Make an interpretation on God's will and pull the deluded believer’s lever. Monotheism is amongst humankind’s most perilous inventions.

As a civil instrument polytheism is a superior construct to monotheism. Polytheistic peoples respected each other’s gods. Historically, the Egyptians, Greeks and Roman had territorial wars of conquest but not Holy Wars determining who ruled what. The Jewish zealots were monotheists, ultimately causing the First Jewish-Rom War and the demise of the Second Temple, 70CE.

[Boaz, surprised you started this thread on this topic, when you didn’t answer my question, as to, Islam regarding Christians and Jews as people of the Book. [?] Please complete the earlier thread you started. See you there. :)]

Oliver wrote "Monotheism is dangerous". I'd go one step further - religion is dangerous. Good men do good things, evil men do evil things. Only religion can make good men do evil things.

As for thinking poytheism isn't so bad, ask the Aztecs' sacrificial victims how they felt about that. Most polytheistic cults sacrificed humans at some time or other. Although I hold all religious belief as primitive, polytheism is the most backward, with its various gods assigned to specific fields - thunder gods, goddesses of love etc.

While not being a jew supporter the Jewish rebellion was due to Roman occupation. Like it or not, it was a war of resistance against an invader (who happened to be polytheistic).

>>Pericles, get your head out of the sand... During your time in Europe, you should have crossed over to England to witness Imams preaching hatred and sedition against the government that allows them to live there. I wonder how you would excuse that<<

Ah, but I was there, JSP, actually there at the time of the attempted bombings. Both of them. And I was able to witness i) the same kind of rabid "it's the Mozzies preaching hatred" reaction that we get over here, appearing in the more sensationalist tabloids, as well as ii) the reaction of the man-in-the-street, which tended to be "they're a bloody nuisance, but then we've seen all this before, haven't we?"

From this safe distance it is easy to forget that England during the IRA "reign of terror" had remarkably similar problems to face. They faced them, resisted them, and eventually they went away. At no time did they think that the IRA were intending to take over the world, but neither did they give into the pressure and donate Northern Ireland to the IRA in order to achieve a quiet life, against the wishes of the six counties' electorate who continuously voted to remain under Westminster rule.

What the US and UK are coming to realize - and we will also discover after the usual latency of four to five years - is that the "global Islamist threat" is mostly in our heads.

This particular problem was created by the ludicrous US concept of "introducing democracy" into areas whose leadership it disapproved of, and failing to understand that there are some fanatics around who would use this as an excuse to further their own violent, personal agenda.

Lessons were clearly not learned from Vietnam. The victory of the communist North did not lead to the downfall of capitalism after all. In fact, it probably accelerated its introduction. Once we realize that the real solution to the Middle East problem is not crushing Islam but finding a political solution to Israel and Palestine that does not involve invasion, we might just make some progress.

Sorry, kactuz, I don't buy those arguments.

>>Pericles, have you ever read the Quran and ahadith? Do you know about the hate and violence in their sacred texts? Do you know that Islam's own traditions tell us that Mohammud murdered, tortured, plundered, enslaved, raped, preached hate and even beat his wife. These are not found in obsure books, but in the most reliable hadiths and in the very earliest works of Islam (Buhkari, Muslim, Abu Dawud, Tabari, Ibn Sa'd, Ibn Ishaq, Kathir, Hisham, etc...). It is not one or two stories, either, but hundreds of vile actions found in all accounts.<<

These are straight from the Boaz "reasons to hate Mozzies" playbook, and they mean precisely nothing to me.

In fact, the only people to whom they appear to hold any meaning at all are - curiously, but satisfyingly symmetrically - fanatical Islamists intent upon destruction of their opponents, and fanatical christians, also intent upon the destruction of their opponents.

Both use quotations from their own and each other's scriptures to support their militant and murderous activities of blind hatred, failing to understand that real people simply ain't like that.

One day we'll all see how silly we have been. And, surprisingly perhaps to you and Boaz, kactuz, when we do, we will all still be alive and free.