Do you subscribe to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion? Because I know a lot of Muslims do, and some Arab governments present this document as fact and required education in their countries.

It was proven to be a hoax.

abu_rashid wrote on Jul 31^st, 2008 at 3:36pm:


Yes, we did. I'm just trying to reconfirmed that your (and other Muslim's) assertion and view is that Anti-Zionist Jews are the minority among wider community of Jews, not just in Oz but worldwide. Is this correct?

yet you condemn the Muslims as anti-Australian terrorists without the slightest hesistation

I criticise Islam for commanding people to commit treason.

you stated that Jews don't hold this as part of their culture

I'm pretty sure I would have said dogma or something similar, not culture. I can understand the Jews wanting a second homeland to escape to next time we start building gas chambers. This is a response to a problem that was thrust upon them, rather than an issue created by the Torah.

You've not proven anything like this about Muslims

i'm happy to go by what you will concede.

BOO HOO, poor Muslims, always someone elses fault, never theirs.

pope urban 2 wrote on Jul 31^st, 2008 at 8:52pm:


Well if you had an understanding of the 20th century you wouldn't look like such an idiot implementing sarcasm.

Quote:


The holy land has been the home to the Canaanites, Phoenicians, Phillistines, Hebrews (note that Arabs as well as Jews are descendants of the Hebrews), Egyptians, Romans, Greeks, Muslims and many other nations/peoples.

A few facts to consider though:

1) in 1901 when the Jews bagn calling for a homeland inside the holy land, they were less than 2% of it's population, and had been so for almost 1800 years. whilst the Muslims had their state there for 1200 odd years. The argument of whether it was a Palestinian state or not is just nonsense, likewise there was no Lebanese state, no Armenian state, no Kurdish state, no Iraqi state, no Pakistani state, no Polish state, no Italian state, no American state, no Icelandic state in most of the world's history either, these nation-states are largely a development of the 19th and 20th century. Perhaps you need to skim through a few history books?

2) The holy land was part of the Islamic state (Caliphate) from the 7th century until the 20th century with only a 99 year lapse, in the time when the Crusaders occupied parts of it in the middle. That is longer than both Jewish Kingdoms end to end.

3) Many of the Palestinians today have ancestry there that even predates the Islamic arrival, and their ancestors converted to Islam in the centuries following the arrival of Islam. Meaning their link with the land goes back even beyond the 1300 odd years since the arrival of Islam.

If you are always looking backwards, you will only find what is behind you, and never find what could be right in front of you.

Perhaps that sounds trite, but Islamic people are having the greatest difficulty grasping this concept, and it will benefit themselves, and the wider world, if they get this point, sooner, rather than later.

Others have written about the disconnection that modern muslims experienced from the traditional Islamic culture, which was pretty well decimated during the colonial expansion of the west over the last 200 years or so, and the loss of context as to where exactly Islam fits, in a modern, changing world.

This has seen a regression to a widely accepted fundamentalist movement, which cites the least evolved, and least acceptable traits of Islam, as the cornerstones of their resurrection as a united people, which unfortunately is seen as setting them on a collision course with the west, which is worrying, but more sadly, it is just not necessary.

This disconnection, from our most recent Islamic empires, which displayed far less fundamentalist ideals,  than that which we see so many young muslims espousing, is forcing muslims to choose between modernity, and Islam, when no such choice should be necessary.

The golden age of Islam did not arise because of intransigence in the face of change, and resistance to progress, but by embracing it, and allowing Islam to change, and grow with their times, but the lack of experience and good governance displayed by many current Islamic spokesmen forces too many to make wrong choices that should not even be offered.

It is up to Islam to seek out the voices of reason and progress, they are out there,and reject the voices of ignorance, which are still too vocal, and forge a new and better Islam which could take it's place as an accepted  modern culture, rather than stay what they are, which is seen as an anachronistic culture, and a threat to peace and stability.

The Mughal, the Isfahan, and the Ottoman, empires all encouraged learning and the arts, they adapted with the times, and saw in the rise of the Islamic golden age.

Do you find it strange that I do not consider all aspects of Islam as evil?

People are judged in the context of the times they lived in, and while many of the practices from these times we would today find unacceptable, in their day they were culturally accepted.

My point is that if the Islamic culture had not been interrupted by colonial conquest, then Islam would have evolved into a more modern, secular society, like the rest of the world's great nations did, and we would not be witnessing this cultural clash from ignorant people who believe they can transpose medieval thinking, and standards, into a modern setting, and somehow ignore the fact that people's expectations for their personal freedoms and rights have moved very far away from what was accepted hundreds of years ago.

Slavery is a good example, our standards have changed dramatically for the better, and seeing fundamentalists try and ignore that progress, by misapplying religious verses out of context of the age they were written in, highlights just one aspect that certainly needs to be examined by progressive muslims.

Fundamentalist Islam is anachronistic, and because of that fact alone, could never gather widespread acceptance, it need not evolve to survive, but it most certainly does need to evolve, if it wishes to flourish.