More invective from someone old enough and allegedly ugly enough to know better (it's so easy to be insulting isn't it?)
Don't agree. I don't care where the bloke comes from. It's not a race issue. I have been fairly incensed watching hard-line white middle-class converts to Islam on the box. That's the worst trap to fall into, because it conflates race with a loathsome ideology. However much you dislike Islam in general, or are prepared to tolerate it, the strand that seeks to exterminate non-believers is every bit as bad as Nazism and it's about time that: a) some figures were quoted to show how prevalent this strand is (huge from the the figures that have been mentioned) b) someone stood up and said that it is not going to be tolerated in any shape or form. If you preached Nazism in the way that extremist Islamic views are routinely voiced, you'd be locked up. But because it's religion, it's supposedly all fine.
I thought you were saying it was unnecessary to edit my posts to make me look stupid. But apologised later if I got it wrong.
I agree with most of that but it is highly unlikely that the reader of this piece would initially come to any conclusion other than the man in question was a white racist - and would not learn otherwise unless they read virtually to the end. Bad editing.
I've looked at the Panorama programme this evening and then followed up with another televised debate "Is Islam a threat to the West?". And I've learnt some stuff: Islam is not remotely clear about what it believes. There are verses of the Koran preaching peace, and others preaching violence. There are those supposedly about being kind to women, others stating quite clearly that women are second class citizens. How do Muslims deal with these contradictions? They use something they term "abrogation". This means that later verses trump earlier verses. So if you find something in the Koran you don't like, so long as you can find something you do like which comes along later to contradict it, you go with that. Then Islamic scholars weigh in to refute this when they feel as though it doesn't represent what they want to believe. The result is a complete hotch-potch of contradictory teaching with no clear consensus of what the teaching should be. I will refrain from expounding here how laughable this is as a serious religion. What it means is that you have two co-existing strands of Islam: the violent and the pacific. The violent strain is gaining ground. Violent Islam wants death to unbelievers, blasphemers, adulterers, apostates and amputations etc for wrongdoers. It's not a minority view, from what you can make out, or if it is, it's still a significant minority. These are the people you need to worry about. Violent extremists are just the people who are prepared to carry out in actions what they believe in thoughts. They may be a very small minority, but the thinking that guides their actions is widely shared. The fact remains that Islam contains a current of violence unlike any other mainstream religion. You wouldn't have that problem if you confined yourself to believing the New Testament. If you started fucking about with the Old Testament, you might, possibly, but you'd have to be a pretty nutty Christian to do that (although they may exist in numbers in the jolly old US of A). So it's problematic and I don't think it's a problem that is going to be quickly solved. Western wars haven't caused this schism (the Muslims have been bumping each other off for years) but they certainly haven't helped promulgate the pacifist view of the religion.
I didn't read it at all. I just looked at the interview with the poor French wallah (who will now get a brick through his window at the very least, if he isn't attacked on his way home).
"Censorship is the child of fear and the father of ignorance" Turkey bans the latest edition of Charlie.....government bans all website access to the magazine/image. Did someone not mention Turkey as a secular government posturing for EU approval? Its a 98% Muslim country with the leader of the 'Islamic Democracy' (surely an oxymoron) appoints his son as minister of education. A direct result of which is the Islamzation of education, 70,000 Islamic clerics graduated from 'imam hatip' schools in 2002. Yearly figures now reach 1 million and the remaining pupils in secular secondary schools are being integrated to reduce future questioning of an Islamic regime in the future. 11 hours of a 40 hour study week are now set aside for Sunni religious study to ensure collective obedience through religion. I don't believe anything I have written to be anti Muslim rhetoric just some facts and personal concerns.
You forgot to mention that the PM of Turkey was on the Paris march expressing solidarity for Charlie Hebdo! I kid you not. So that's them and the Saudis being revealed as blatant hypocrites - I wonder who else?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law I fear that Godwin's Law swings into effect once more. In this instance though, the comparison of Islamic with Nazi doctrines is surely a valid and relevant one.
Turkey has been a candidate for accession to the EU for decades, supported by the UK and opposed by France among others. The accession process has not got far in all this time, and in the light of recent developments is a dead duck.
Can't help feeling that NATO has been so widened that the difference of opinion in it has meant that it's now not that useful. Turkey isn't even in the north Atlantic. I assume it's just a means of the Americans having control over the military of other countries as a sort of buffer - much as the Warsaw Pact was for Russia.
