XPost: rec.arts.books.tolkien, alt.books.cs-lewis   
   From: dthierbach@usenet.arcornews.de   
      
   William Cloud Hicklin  wrote:   
   > On Fri, 13 Apr 2007 02:08:26 -0400, Dirk Thierbach   
   >  wrote:   
      
   >> Christians have been doing crusades under the pretext that "God   
   >> commanded it." Can we now conclude that all Christians have as   
   >> their only goal war on non-christians, and are doing exactly what   
   >> they religion tells them to? Please get real.   
      
   > Please stop bringing up millennium-old events.  The jihad is taking   
   > place *right now*.   
      
   First, I don't see any jihad, I see a number of fundamentalists using   
   "jihad" and "religion" as an excuse to wage terror. As catholics and   
   protestants have done in North Ireland. As the extreme-left RAF   
   organziation has done (with a different excuse) in Germany some time   
   ago. Etc., etc.   
      
   Muslims don't have the monopoly on terrorist acts. You can use any   
   ideology as an excuse.   
      
   Second, the point was to refute the false generalization: "There are   
   some Muslims who commit terrorist acts, they excuse that with their   
   religion, hence all Muslims must be terrorists in their hearts".  This   
   generalization is as wrong as the one with the Crusades above. And it   
   doesn't matter one bit that one took place some time ago. Wrong is   
   wrong.   
      
   These false generalizations are really the root of all hatred. And   
   those that don't learn from history what consequences this can have   
   are probably condemned to repeat history.   
      
   > Except that the Muslim version is hard-coded into the Quran, the   
   > Word of Allah > Gabriel > Muhammed.   
      
   And the Bible has also lots of "interesting" things "hard-coded" into   
   it, for example Slavery.   
      
   > I don't doubt that Muslims you know deny it. [...] It's called   
   > 'taqqiyah,' roughly the same as KGB-speak 'disinformazia."   
   > Essentially, "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.   
   > Nobody in here but us chickens.  Just go to sleep."   
      
   So what are they supposed to do? If they don't talk about it, they are   
   accused of guilty silence. If they deny it, they are accused of lying.   
   In what way are they supposed to behave to demonstrate their   
   innocence? You give them no chance, you have already judged them   
   without paying attention to the particular person. Especially *you*   
   as a law-person should know about the danger in that.   
      
   I am sorry, but I really prefer to trust my personal judgement more   
   than prejudice instilled by fear. The ones I know are nice people,   
   basically. There are some "bad eggs" among Muslims in general, but   
   I am no more afraid of them than of other criminals among non-Muslims.   
      
   Terrorists are just criminals, treat them like every other criminal.   
   If you start giving up basic human rights because of them, or start to   
   treat people differently because of their faith, the terrorists have   
   already won.   
      
   And proposing that every Muslim deep inside only plans jihad on all   
   Westerners is just bullshit. Sorry. The ones I know wouldn't behave   
   the way they do towards me if that was true.   
      
   - Dirk, now really EOT   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)