soren,

Quote:


By you and your ilk, no it isn't discussed as a religion, because you seek to deny it's very legitimacy as a religion. You're only interested in it's political aspects, as that's what suits your wishes for Islam.

That says more about your approach to Islam, than Islam's supposed lack of religiosity.

Quote:


You mentioned above costumes, and now you mention Buddhism. You've never seen Buddhists walking around in 'costumes'?? I don't know where you live, but I often see Buddhist monks walking around in their saffron robes. As for politics, never visited a Chinese embassy and seen the Falun Gong protestors who *constantly* maintain a presence outside? Or the hundreds of thousands of cars driving around with "Free Tibet" stickers on them? Other religions have religious/political activities here, you're just simply not interested in them, you're only interested in the political activities of Muslims.

And if you're concerned about Muslims being politically active, can we take this as a sign, you'd prefer to stifle their political freedom? Aren't you supposed to be teaching those poor, oppressed, & politically stifled Muslims about political freedom?

Or is it as I suspect, you're actually a totalitarian in disguise as a champion of human rights and freedoms?

Quote:


You're entitled to your opinion, has very little to do with reality. I know why I converted, and what factors were involved, you do not.

Quote:


If it makes you feel better to belittle my choice and to try and explain it as being merely circumstantial, go ahead. People like Marmeduke Pickthall were converting to Islam well over 40 years ago, and he in fact dedicated his life to the work for the re-establishment of the Caliphate. So it's certainly nothing new nor is it merely a consequence of who happens to be migrating into Western countries at the present.

abu_rashid wrote on Feb 15^th, 2009 at 3:35pm:



I and my ilk do not bring up the political dimentions of Buddhism or Taoism because the partisans of these relgions themselves don't. I and my ilk get extremely irritated and frustrated by islam because its partisans are always in my face about their political demands, fatwahs, burnings, bombings, exceptionalist demands and generally insufferable behavouur.

Women covering their faces in my city? How smacking rude is that? Singling out the costume - and ignoring the bloody acts and inciting language,  you manage to bring to attention your primitive belief about the subjugation and ill-treatment of half of humanity. Islam is misogynist, it is woman-phobic. It is shrivelled into violence by the sight of femele skin. How bloody life-denying. All it can say is - either cover them up or it is licencious promiscuity. How barbaric, unimaginative, how alien.

The safron robe is not a sign of merciless, swaggering oppresssion by semi- or illiterate bearded men who genuinely believe that they know the mind of god. Their bloody arrogance knows no bounds. They will kill or burn with acid to maintain the subjugation of their womenfolk. And that's their womenfolk, muslims women - their daughters and nieces. Whaat would they do to infidel girls and women?


Quote:




How utterly ridiculous and sinister. To equate car stickers and chanting on mats with fatwahs, embassy burnings, calling for death and destructon in mosques after prayers, not to meention the sustained and purpusefull killing spree and violent intimidation by the more dedicated and bloody minded proponents of muslim orthodoxy, from Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan to Britain, Madrid, Bali, Germany France, Denmark and Australia.

Quote:


I want to stifle nothing. Quite the opposite. I do not want to stifled by a blatently political program that hides behind its religiosity every time it is criticised. You are welcome to the political debate but leave your fatwahs, Rage Boys, threats, open and veiled, massacres and religious special pleading at the door. Otherwise muslims call upon themselves all the scorn, ridicule and contempt freeborn citizens of any colour and persuasion can muster.





Quote:



He was just looking for a way to ditch his name, Marmeduke, and who can blame him.

Quote:


Perfect summation of your arguments..

Quote:


No more than them converting to Christianity, which comes from about roughly the same culture as Islam anyway. Middle Eastern Semitic. Although you'd like to playdown the similarities and shared origins, it's meaningless.

If Westerners should have a 'Western' religion, then you should go back to worshipping Odin or whatever other polytheistic crap you used to indulge in, before the Scandanavian crusade 'civilised' your lot.

Quote:


He was probably just painting it in a more objective light. Perhaps mentioning stuff like the Armenian rebels who were incited by Russia against the Caliphate. Who would attack Ottoman troops returning, wounded, from the fronts during the war, and then disappear into the civilian population. Funny but when the West and Israel do this today, we're told how necessary it is to attack the civilians to get the militants. Same deal back then... some how I don't think you're buying, when it's not your Zionist mates selling.

Quote:


By WWI the Ottoman Caliphate was far out of Muslim hands. It was run by secularist nationalist Turks, who were connected with the Brits... Sorry, can't say I'm particularly defensive of them myself. However, as you'll read above, there was a lot more to it than what we're told. Especially if we buy into the militants dissolving into the crowds jazz.

Do you believe the 'habit' of nuns to be misogynistic?

Should it be banned?

If you were alive in the time of the honoured virgin Mary (pbuh) would you have called for her head covering to be ripped off her also?

abu_rashid wrote on Feb 17^th, 2009 at 6:48am:



You are missing the point, as usual.

It is not about origins only - except for Islam. For Islam, its beginning is also its end. Islam is going nowhere , and wants to go nowhere, EXCEPT where it was at its invention. It is a dead-end. Why?

A religion that is the last word will not, in effect, accept anything that is not already contained in it. It must regulate every aspect of daily life excatly because it cannot endure innovation - a word meaning the introduction of something new. Here is nothing new under Islam because there CANNOT be anything new. New is anti-islam. Being the last, unimprovable word from god, islam is fossilised and stuck. It cannot BUT insist on sharia, it cannot BUT insist on 7th century garb, social relations, hair fetish, and it cannot but insists that desert habits in Araby are of universal value and significance. It is stuck with nowhere to go. it is a dead end, has been since inception.

This is why population is neither here nor there. It is an unproductive, unmotivate, semi- or illiterate population, half of whom atre even further oppressed and repressed by the other half.  There are 400 million (read four hundred million) living muslims for every muslim Nobel Prize winner since thee inception of thee Prize over a 100 years ago.  Islam, as far as innovation, modernity and the rest of the world is concerned, is a mass of dead-eyed or uninterested people.

Just for a sense of proportion, there are 89.000 (read eighty nine thousand) jews for every jewish Nobel Prize winner. Lively or what?