D'vorahDavida
Yetzirah

Interesting point of view.

You know, were you to be in certain countries in Europe, and had substituted the word Judaism for Islam, you'd be subject to censorship, and in some cases, imprisonment for your anti-semitic views.

Something to consider.

I am outraged. Not only at the article, but the previous comment.

You've made good points here and all I can say is AMEN!!!!

It will be interesting to see what other comments you receive. I don'like it when ANYONE participates in acts like those. Call me whatever you want!

Was I mistaken or did you say you were going to email those links to me? I'm assuming, if that was the case, that you were going to forward them last night. It's certainly not an emergency since I CAN search but I was particularly interested in the amethyst and know you have that particular site link.

Thank you again, oh friend with the beautiful teeth!

God bless you and the world.

Amen and Amen.

We mourn.

Shalom

I hear what you're saying, but atheists get beaten up by Baptists every day of the week. A couple years back I read a news report of a man who was shot to death by his Christian neighbor because the man told his neighbor he was an atheist. The killer said later that he knew there must be a devil in his neighbor, so he had to kill him.

Wherever there's a fundamentalist interpretation of a religion, there will be violence against those who do not believe the same way.

There are plenty of peaceful, tolerant, humanitarian Muslims just as there are peaceful, tolerant humanitarian Jews, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, and even atheists. You can't condemn an entire sect out of hand for the actions of the ones who make the news, or you'd have to condemn us all.

And, if you look at the amazing architecture of the ancient Muslim cities, you'll see some of the art of Islam. Some beautiful poetry survives from Arabic writers of old, like Khayyam and Rumi.

Your concerns are absolutely valid, but remember we only know what we're told happened and we weren't there. I have no doubt the person was killed and the circumstances were horrible, but we really don't have the full story.

--Solo

Evil, evil. And I wonder at anyone who doesn't understand. Thank you for sharing that, those types of reports never make MSM at all. No way to spin that into anything good for Islam. Idiots.

Hmm..I'm disregarding your preface about closing the window.

If you don't like these kind of comments, turn off commenting.

Your opinion here is inherently racist. While I respect that you are speaking your mind....shame on you. You're a middle aged, middle aged woman who should know better than to be so closed minded. The Islamic countries that you appear to be so hostile to have been home to many different philosophers, poets, musicians, works of art, and architechtures that have stood the test of time.

I'm surprised that you would let your inherent prejudices blind you to the obvious. Art, literature, and architecture have nothing to do qith someone being murdered. Shame on you for trying to link the two.

PredEd: I did not write anything about comments to this entry anywhere on DD.

If you have an unauthenticated or private comment about it on your diary, it did not come from me.

I let comments stand.

Everyone has an opinion.

That's why I leave the comment function ON.

I do disagree with you: here’s why:

Since the example you used was between Muslims and Christians in Africa, I will follow the same line with an example, any example:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/22/AR2006022200876.html Christians kill more than eighty Muslims. Yes, they did it after killings by Muslims, so perhaps there is some excuse for that in the Bible that negates “turn the other cheek”. Christians break religious principles, including “thou shalt not kill” all the time, so do Muslims. Christians nitpick parts of the Bible all the time to justify actions they want to perform anyhow. So do Muslims. Some of these Christians and Muslims are full of hate for people not like themselves. So they kill. These Muslims were not executed for crimes against Christians. They were just Muslims.

Ok, so you don’t like what some people have done in the name of Islam. I totally agree with you in condemning THOSE people, as individuals. To condemn every Muslim for the acts of some (when it is killing and justification of killing using religion that are deplorable) is to perpetuate the violence.

Similarly, I condemn *you* for perpetuating human intolerance of other humans on the basis of their religion, rather than condemning them as individuals if their actions warrant condemnation. Until this sort of violence also stops, the violence will not stop from either side. Christian games such as Left Behind promote the killing of non-Christians, and could be used in a similar propaganda-style manner to say that all Christians support violence. They don’t. I know plenty of Christians who don’t.

For the sake of balance, I have to say that while I have met many Muslims in the course of my travels, and many of them were peaceful lovely people, I have also read the Quran and find that verses can be pulled out of isolation from that text to support BOTH the peaceful nature of Islam AND promoting violence against non-Muslims. My point is, some people use their religion to justify their anger and hatred, other people use it as a means of living peacefully and lovingly with their neighbors.

I have read many opinion sites on the net, and a few books in my local library that say that the US and Israel are operation on national and not religious levels when they level attacks on nations that identify as mostly Muslim. However, when a nation identifies itself with a religion as strongly as these two nations do, I think that you cannot separate religion and state when it comes to state-sanctioned acts of violence.

Anyhow, enough of my opinion. Let me answer some of the questions that you have asked, since you asked so humbly for someone to answer them:

For beauty, I refer you to the Taj Mahal. If you have not had the chance to go there, I suggest you do, and lean your body in the warm sun against a marble wall inlaid all over with semi-precious stones. Tell me then that this piece of beauty does not make your soul sing. There are thousands of examples of totally stunning Islamic architecture. I was studying incredible tile patterns from Mosques recently to inspire me to get back into doing my art. They are so beautiful.

And OhMy! – the poetry of Rumi. So beautiful. It encapsulates a mystical philosophy as well, one that promotes peace and the joy of beauty.

During the Dark Ages of Christianity, when people were executed and reviled for thinking such heretical thoughts as “the world is round”, Islamic scientists had determined for centuries from the stars that the world was in fact round, and was not the center of our solar system.

Philosophers such as Abulcasis were also at the forefront of medical science for his time (around the year 1000) successfully performing delicate operations and designing medical instruments that would not be used in Christian medical science for many centuries more.

Islam has some incredible music as well. I could send you some if you like. An Egyptian friend sent me some amazing music last year by Donia (who I believe is from Sudan) – it is so beautiful. When I have traveled in Muslim-dominated countries such as Malaysia, I have often deliberately stayed near mosques because I love waking up to that wonderful pre-dawn call to prayer. Having traveled with a fundamentalist Christian through India, I can understand that some people’s prejudices lead them to find this type of unfamiliar music offensive to the ear, but since that individual also tried hard to appreciate Hindu music, I find it hard to take that as an excuse over her fundamentally religious prejudice. Interestingly, one of her excuses was that she was forced to hear the prayers of another religion, and I nearly wet myself laughing when we ended up in a tiny village with her religions pastor preaching to the 20% of the village of her religion via a system of loudspeakers set up through the village! lmao

One thing I did find throughout the Quaran was charity and humanitarian impulses, especially towards women and children. Yes, this does not negate other references towards violence, but neither can you say that humanitarian impulses do not exist simply because of the other references as well. To do so is to perpetuate the sort of biased ignorance that you are trying to fight against in certain Muslims.

There are many other examples. I have just selected a few as examples to encourage you to not make such blanket statements about groups of people. Similar statements could be made about Christianity throughout its history, but this does not negate the loveliness of places like the Sistine Chapel is reputed to be.
There is much hope, love of life, beauty and nobleness spread throughout humankind, including through people of all their religions. Religions have long been used to perpetuate ignorance, especially in areas of the world where people have been impoverished and emotionally and socially devastated by ongoing wars. I do think this is a Dark Age of Islamic history, one where power-mongers of some nations are using the tactic of keeping the population in ignorance except for the stories/propaganda they want them to hear. To infer that therefore Islam has contributed nothing to the world is just perpetuating a similar ignorance, and risks taking religious beliefs about other religions back to a new Dark Ages style level of ignorance. However, such ignorance is only being perpetuated by bringing more violence to such countries, breeding desperation, low levels of education, the destruction of beauty, and the need to cling to group mentalities in order to feel some sense of power in a desperate and powerless situation in the lives of many individuals.

Yes I find it hard to imagine a Muslim man being killed outside a Baptist church in the US, because the US is in a totally different social situation, one of comfort where religious propaganda is used in a different way by the media (although not so different, from some of the sites I have read this morning) and where hatred and killing is supported through state sanctioned means. Having said this, I have seen a lot of video footage on the net of Baptists promoting the killing of Muslims through the state sanctioned war machine, and it brings to mind the Bible verse “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” I am glad I live in a country where individuals who commit such acts would be tried accordingly, but to wish those acts committed anyhow, and to only not do them because the law would punish them for it is still a bad thing.

I am distressed by the number of anti-Islamic books coming out in the US at the moment. They are as full of ignorance as many anti-Christian or anti-Jewish books I have seen over the years from various places in the world. Christianity, and many other religions were born out of equal violence as Islam, and I see many religious people promoting ugliness and intolerance on a daily basis.

In the 14th century, Iranian Islamic scholar Ibn Khaldun wrote a sociological history of the world studying how group identity on the basis of social factors such as religion, contributes to the ascent of political power. Aggression begets aggression, especially when it is based on a my-group-vs-your-group mentality. The aggression will only stop when we stop seeing other human beings as part of the “them” group, and realize that the violence can only begin to stop with one person. Me.

For more anti-Muslim violence in America:

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/sep2001/musl-s21.shtml

There are also a lot of links to other attacks on that webpage.

RYC: I was thinking the same thing when I saw that leaf. We had a lot of snow over winter, and I took a lot of snow pics in that park, and it was there all the time, waiting patiently for spring to reveal it again. :)

"What has Islam contributed to the world?

What joy? What hope? What love of life? What beauty? What nobleness? What great ideas? What compassion? What sacredness of life? What really great humor? Music? Art? Philosophy? Humanitarian impulse?"

To StillLife's excellent list, can I add mathematics? At the time when Europe was still struggling with a mathematical system based on roman numerals, and with no concept of zero, Arab mathematicians were busy inventing algebra. It can be argued that the introduction of algebra and zero (another Arabic discovery) to Europe was responsible for kick-starting all of Western science. Certainly without the advanced mathematics that evolved from them, most of today's technology could never have been invented.

I've spent several months in the Middle East, and I found the people there to be among the most generous and tolerant I've met anywhere. I've discussed religion with a Muslim man in Iran, and his reaction to my being an atheist was much more tolerant than many Christians I've met (he didn't tell me I was going to Hell, for a start!). I've visited many mosques, and count many of them as the most beautiful religious buildings I've ever seen, both inside and out - so much for not contributing beauty!

I know there are bigoted extremist Muslims out there who will do terrible things in the name of religion, but there's bigoted extremist Christians out there too who are just as bad.

Like I said, I'm an atheist, but I do know that Christ said "Love thy neighbour", not "Love thy neighbour as long as he's the same as you". I think a lot of people could do with remembering that teaching, and showing their Muslim neighbours (because after all, in today's global village, we're all neighbours) some tolerance and respect.

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You should really educate yourself properly before making comment on a religion you clearly know nothing about.

You make yourself look feeble minded.