Agreed, it certainly has a bloody history, but that's largely because if Muhammed hadn't raised a makeshift army sharpish their band would have been hunted down and killed for their beliefs.
I have to take issue with one point of yours regarding the action they should take:
Quote:
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the faithful of Islam should be ont he front lines dying with the Infidel Americans and British and others to stop the so called "People who pervert the peaceful religion of Islam"
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Surely you're not suggesting they should have signed up to the war on Iraq for this privelege? Where else would they have the opportunity to do this if I've misunderstood you?
I would also suggest that it
is Muslims who are on the front line and dying because of these madmen. I would hazard a guess that a good 80% of Islamic terrorist attacks kill exclusively or mainly Muslims. Witness the latest explosion outside a Sunni mosque yesterday for example...
As for the wider question, I've read both accusative and apologist literature on the issue of Islam being inherently violent and I'm still utterly undecided. For every example of a Muslim that would 'conform' to Western views on civilization I should imagine there is one who doesn't.
The question is, should we impose our culture on them, even if we believe that theirs is morally wrong? I'll always remember the Muslim woman clad in the hijab who asked "have you ever asked a Muslim woman if she's opressed?"
Just a brief foray into the Israeli-Arab conflict to respond to your point about that: Muslim's saying that they want to kill Jews is not much different from some of the Jewish writings and ideologies at the time of the first Arab-Israeli conflict. Ben-Gurion's diary springs to mind for example. Definitely Muslims do not have a monopoly on hatred in that region, and you will likely find voices on both sides that would gladly wish the other dead. For each of them, I would imagine there would be ten more who just want the violence to stop and to leave in peace.
[ 11-03-2004, 07:12 PM: Message edited by: shamrock_uk ]