I didn't refer to Triebesman alone. HT used the term skirts too, that' why there is no name tag in my quote. ;)

I just had to prove my signature right again.:salute:

On Betz I cant comment, I do not know him.

But Quantara I do know.

The site can only be assessed in all perspectives, when knowing what it is. It was a project initiated by the German interior ministry some years ago, during the founding stage of what over here is called "Islamkonferenz", a regular meeting between state representatives and representatives from various Muhammeddan organizations. The intention was to boost integration by giving Muslims a platform to voice their plans, demands and intentions, because as it is widely known over here by now that integration of Muslim immigrants has failed miserably in the past 30 years.

The competence of the german officials usually displayed when meeting Islam is such that they accept organizations that are close to the arch-orthodox Muslim-brotherhood and even Turkish nationalists to be counted as "moderates".

The interior ministre just weeks ago voiced his deep frustration, like several colleagues on federal country-level as well, that Muslims actively resist integration and actively reject to cooperate with the law enforcmeent authorities.

Several huge and highly influential orthodox organisations are boycotting the conference, seing it as unimportant anyway. After several years, the conference so far has acchieved nothing. That demands had been raised that the constitution shall be bend in favour of Islamic rules, get leaked from behind the statge curtain time and again. for many organisations it is no platform to help Muslims integrating into wetsern society and culture, but to demand that these societies and cultures have to change according to Islam. This is the usual understanding of the term "dialogue with Islam".

The perception of Islam as being a tame and peaceful, tolerant and wanting-to-coexist culture, systematically denies the many inner contradictions, the explicit statements and sources in scripture, namely Quran and Hadith and Sharia, and examples from history that prove that Islam is by far not that peaceful and tolerant.

This is the criticism Raddatz comes under attack by: that he dares to call these facts back to memory and insists on them being seen as part of Islam that they always have been, and are still today. By that he interrupts the naive and unknowing people's choires singing the song of mutual understanding and how equal Islam is to Christianity etc.

He also has explained en detail what values of the Quran collide head on with what stated values in the constitution, and is as adamant as I am to point out that Islam and Western constitutions are totally incompatible in many very substantial and basic key items - and that integration of Islam for that reason alone already must fail, always. The facts formed by the past 40 years, give such criticism undeniable legitimation, if not closing both eyes in a determined and chosen effort to deny reality.

Consequently, his pointing at references to these unpleasant integral components of Islam is used to attack Raddatz and accusing him of telling unpleasant, "islamophobic" things about Islam. By that the attacking against Raddatz fulfills right that argument of the criticism made by Raddatz himself: that contemporary perception of Islam in the West conveniently ignores everything that does not match the wanted and naive perception of islam as being just an oriental version of the message of Jesus, and that it is tolerant and peaceful and bla and bla and bla.

The criticism against Raddatz therefore gives justification for his own attack against the current mainstream of Islam studies done in the West. The way the West perceives Islam is as substantial and complete as if one would describe the Christian faith while ignoring key items like the teaching of Jesus and the sermon on the mountain. In Germany, practically all key offices of institutions dealing with Oriental studies and islam currently are held by persons known for having a very uncritical, personally close tie to Islam and Arab interest groups. Protestant priest are not too stupid to demand in church sevics that Muhammad's birthday should be celebrated by Christians in church together with the birthday of Jesus. As if both men had anything in common! the movie "Kingdom of Heaven" brings it right down to the point in one wonderful, short line of words: "Jesus said: decide. Muhammad said: submit".

This infantility and self-mutiliation of intellectual analysis forms hardly the climate where a reminder of unwelcomed truths is being welcomed by anybody. so far I have not seen much substantial, justified criticism of Raddatz, and where it was given, often the cirtic is one of those Raddatz is aiming at, because the critic's selective amnesia regarding unwanted facts about Islam makes him legitimate target for Raddatz to accuse him of right that: sleective amnesia. Raddatz methods are attacked, because they give a wider, more complete picture of the truth. He denies to obey to self-censorship and obedience-in-advance so that good ol' Ilsam just will not feel offended, where the implication of islam'S selfperpcetion is that it will always be offended anyway as long as there is something that is not itself. This makes Raddatz guilty of "selectively picking his information" - where in fact his information is much more complete and more far-reaching and includes more of Islam'S whole completeness than that of the current politically most correct debators who just remain silent about evertyhing that could disturb the public peace-tolerance-multiculturalism-chanting - and by that reveal an almost passionate pro-Islam-bias.

If then you have intellectuals supporting this climate, and Muslims wanting to give a good impression of their ideology, posting "complete" information on a site like Quantara - initiated by an incompetent government wanting to sell Muslim immigration as a success story, then it is no surprise if that site posts criticism against "Islamophobes" who want to paint Islam bad - while in fact all they do is painting it in all it's completeness, not leaving out the many dark spots people become so angry over when getting reminded of their reality. Such attitude takes it with anger that the criticising person, in this case Raddatz, does not limit himself to only point at pleasant things, but also at the many "but'S" there are as well, and by that gives a far more complete picture of Islam than most of his critics.

By agenda, that site does not want an objective and neutral assessement of Islam, but it wants to influence the public climate to make westerners even more uncritical of islam as they already are, and openly supports the anchoring of even more Islam in the West. Such a position hardly can be seen as "objective", and neutral. the audience posting there must be seen in this light.

I knew quantara before, not just since you linked to it. But I always was unimpressed by it. It is as if I want objective, neutral and where needed: self-critical information about the history of the Catholic church - and ask the Vatikan for that. That really would be the last adress I would check for that!

You know I could have sworn that when the tolerant Christians from history had their little inquisative thing with people of the wrong faith it was the Muslim Maghreb and Ottoman Empire that offered sanctuary to the Jews .
But hey maybe Skybird is like Raddatz in that he likes to rewrite history to fit his agenda .

The point is they don't wear kilts on duty unless they are ordered and authorized to wear them as part of the uniform of the day. You won't see them wearing kilts during combat, training or during morning PT.

The Jews were accepted by the Ottomans for one reason only: while superior in motivation, the Ottoman empire's soldiers at that time lacked the firepower and technology known to the West. The Jews payed their place in the Ottoman empire by bringing superior western military technology with them. As a result the military firepower of the Ottomans grew tremedously, and the Jews say themselves well-revenged indeed for having been made object of prosecution and progroms in their former European homes. It was comparable with Jews and Christians in Grenada, where Muslim rulers opportunistically also made use of their diverse cultural work, and adapted parts of it for their own well-being and to the benefit of Islamic society. That does not chnage the fact that Jews and Christians were forced to live in disgrace and submission, stripped of laws that were normal for muslims, and having to accept to fill only lower social classes and jobs with poor reputation, since the Quran obligatorily demands the humilation and degrading treatement of infidels so that they shall not forget that they suffer rightfully from their inferiority to Islam and their fate being the penalty for not being Islamic. It's a system of obligatory, systematic discrimination, it is called "coexistence with Islam". The only exeption were some Jewish doctors whom at that time already were superior in knowledge to the medicine known in the muslim world at that time. Strange - before Muhammad appeared, Arabia was superior in medical and scientific and mathematical knowledge. After muhammad's impact, it all started to stagnate until the former inferior Christian Europe - had become superior in skills and knowledge just 3-5 centuries later. In the modern, Muhammad'S countries still live in a self-inflicted stoneage and can only grow and develope where they copy and buy methods and skills developed in the infidel West.

First of all those were not "tolerant" christians but were the Roman Catholics that had a spree of inquistions which also included spain. Spain wanted to bring the inquistion to Rome itself which seems like an oxymoron to me. This had nothing to do with the protestant side of christendom which had its own reformation. I would think it is a fair eatimate that 99% of christians today see the inquistions and the Mather witch trials as being a very dark spot on their history. One that is regrettable and behavior that would not be tolerated as opposed to the actions of murder of the Muslim religion seems to embrace in our day and time.

And the point is he was authorised to wear the sweat pants , but then a superior said he wasn't until another more senior said he was .
Would you object if a Jewish recruit asked to be authorised to wear a Yarmulke ?

Ah I see , it wasn't Christians it was Catholics ,silly me for a moment there I was confused and thought Catholics were Christian .So you mean tolerant Christians of the Protestant flavours :hmmm:
Protestant ? that came around with that Luther fella didn't it , not that black fella that wanted civil rights and got shot but the earlier fella that had a thing about Jews , what was the title of one of his books ? the Jews and their lies wasn't it ? Isn't he the man that said there would be no fault in slaying Jews? But hey at least he was balanced , he thought peasants that had abandoned rightousness should be slaughtered too .
So you are right , history shows the tolerance, but you have a very funny definition of tolerant don't you :yeah:

O.K. you have a point there, but this is 500 years ago. How about now? I don't see any inquisation in Europe anymore, I don't see christians burning books (I think the Nazis were the last ones to do that) or destroying property of other religions and killing people because they are not christians or because they painted a picture of Jesus in a mockering way.
In the western world such deeds are nowadays considered as crimes!
But I do see Islamists doing this pretty much every day in the name of Allah.

The uniform of the day is just that. There should be no deviations without prior authorization. The Master Gunnys mistake was not backing up his squad leader not demanding that the recruit change into proper uniform.

If you have ever been in the military then you would know that (unless it is an unlawful order) the correct response is always to obey the order then object to it after the fact. I'm not sure what Yarmulkes and sweat pants have to do with wearing kilts as a personal fashion choice though.

So you missed the burning of Harry Potter books then ?
What about the burning of the Book of Mormon ?
Did you miss them ? They were all in the news .
How about this ...
http://www.memrijttm.org/content/en/...520&param=IDTA

I realy missed that. Sounds like nut jobs to me.

Yet again, you justify mainstream Islamic indiscretions by citing fringe Christian indiscretions...

...your arguments are wafer-thin at best.

No they are fringe and fringe , I cite the fringe because again people have been denying that Christians do such things , as in ........Though of course historicly the Catholic and Protestant church cannot really be described as fringe can they ,and lets face it neither the church of Peter or the fathers of protestantism can be described as very tolerant in their past interpretations and applications of scripture can they .

Did you notice the Memri description of typical Islamophobia which fits some of what has been presented in this topic ? hate filled and stereotypical .
Now I know some people accuse Memri of being very bias and nothing more than a propoganda outfit , but they don't accuse it of being that in a pro-Islamic way do they .
The problem here Aramike is that some are taking extremist interpretations and applying them collectively to the mainstream yet when faced with other extreme interpretations just call them loonies . Which does suggest a complete lack of objectivity and balance .

*SIGH*

I know where you're coming from, but my point stands.

People deny Christians are doing such things because they are unaware of those things. Like we both agree ... fringe.

The Islamic fundamentalism which many of us see as a problem is, however, quite a bit more known and visible, due to a higher perpetuation of incidences ... mainstream.

Having a bigger fringe doesn't make it mainstream Aramike .