The Quran at one passage says "let there be no compulsion in religion" (the 2nd or 4th Sura, if I'm not mistaken), and usually this passage is isolated and quoted alone, but indeed what is said is that the rightfulness of Allah'S truth speaks out for itself and is so obvious that indeed no compulsion is needed to believe in it. there is no compulsion needed if you believe the right thing: Islam. Nevertheless, not believing it thus makes you an evil-doer, and a potential threat and offense to Islam, therefore although you have been told there shall be no compulsion in relgion you will find yourself being attacked or discriminated. The freedom Islam allows goes only as far as it is covered and legitimated and in confimrity by Sharia. there cannot be a legal system or a value system beside it, since the sharia is the tool meant to assist the believer not to fall off from his belief (by threatening him sanctions if he does that: apostasy in the end must be punished with death). Only when the cause of this offese to islam is made to go away, there can be peace again - a peace in which no compulsion is needed in religion, since the only relgion left to believe in is islam.

Theologically, the quran leaves little doubt that only the Jews and Christains, as people of the book, shall receive the soecial tresatement of just being discirminbated. Infidels of other beliefs - are to be killed. Simply that. Compared to genocide, just enforced submission and discrimination may compare to a description of relative tolerance indeed - or not.

One cannot see this if only literally taking isolated single quotes from the Quran, and leave it to that. Also, there are many quotes possible that say the opposite even if just taking things literally and superficially.

Compare it all to another detail: for Islam, the final outcome of all man becoming Muslim is wanted by nature, and it'S uöltimate, devine goal. Helping this developement even by force and aggression, is not a violent act or aggression, since it just assists nature in acchieveing the inevitable outcome that will be there anyway. Being Muslim, seen that way, is declared the goal of evolution. In the same way islam thinks that enforcing it's faith onto others cannot be rated and understood to be compulsive.

When Muslim communities refuse to cooperate with law enforcement agencies, this also is becasue doing so is not being seen as a violation of laws of that country, but is obedient to the Sharia that is simply more important than any government's law as long as that law does not found on the Sharia. So, rejecting the police cooperation is not seen as a violation of laws, becasue it is in cofomrity with the law of the sharia. In much the same fashion wants to redefine freedom of speech and freedom of opinion - accepting that freedom only as long as it accepts limits set up by the Sharia, and as long as these freedoms stop short of being used to criticise Islam. This ind of censoring - from an Islamic point of view indeed nevertheless is freedom. - This all not to excuse it, but only to explain it. People must understand that even if islam uses the same terms and labels, islamic tradition often has a very, a completely different understanding of them.

On "no compulsion", the quran somewhere explicitly lists exceptions: Women, children, apostates and POW can be converted by force.

The Quran is extremely difficult to understood in full if you are novice to it and only read it page by page, wothiut any backup by secondary literature. Some say it is impossible for amateurs to correctly study it. I can only second that. It is this amateurish attitude that most often produces naive images of this or that single quote meaning islam is this peaceful and that tolerant. that's why I am very hesitent to put up just quotes that should illustrate my pojnt, becasue doing so is pointless if not explaining the wider context and voila - there I am writing a nother evening-long essay. Without wanting to brag: there is a reason why I read three quarters of the Quran - and roughly three dozen more books on Islam and the Quran and muhammad and the Hadith as well, it's history and legal traditions. that does not make me an expert having all that always ready on my mind, but it has given me the greater picture and an understanding of the general things it is about, and if needed I know where to find the details in the books.

Often Grenada is given as an example of tolerant coexistence. But in fact the era of the Almohades was one of the most brutal and violent oppression of dhimmis in the history of Islam, a time of systematic discrimination of Jews and Christians who were made objects of progroms regularly. Jews were not allowed to work in more than just the lowest professions like leather tanners, they were not allowed to wear shoes and had to walk on bear foot as a sign of their status of submission, and they had to attach - hear hear - small yellow rags to the cloathing at their chest. They had no access to the legal protections and benefits Muslims enjoyed, and could be murdered for fun by Muslims without the muslim needing to fear legal consequnces. Only when the ruling caste could directly benefit from the high education of Jews, doctors for example, they were allowed to raise in social position and work for them directly, then. For the same reason, the rulers in Grenada allowed the Jews and Christians to conserve the remains of rich christian, Gereek and latin scriptures on scinece and culture, that often are claimed by islam to have been saved by islam and thus having saved the cultural cradle of Europe. This is an infamous impertinence to claim, becasue the Muslim elite ruling Grenada did no starts this effort, nor did it support it, but only allowed the Jews and christians to do that by their own effort and sharing the results with the Muslim rulership so that it could benefit from it as well.

Grenada is said to have been an example of tolerant coexistence and multiculturalism, but it is that only in the same understanding as the ghetto in Warsaw indeed was a paradise ghetto as claimed by the Nazis.

A claim of the Quran endorsing the right to exercise free choice in matters of belief, is a total crap-statement and makes mockery of all the many people who had and have to suffer by Islam's tolerance that discriminates them for not wanting to believe like Muhammad wanted it to be done.

Lesson of it all: if you believe the right things, there must no be compulsion in belief indeeded, and if you agree to only say the right things, there can be freedom of speech, too. Its not much different to the EU: ask the people, but only as long as they vote as you want them to vote. If they don't - do not ask them. As long as apostasy is ruled by islam to be worth deserving the death penalty, the claim that Islam knows no compulsion in religion, should be taken carefully. I also want to temind of the osmanic elite warrior of the Janitscharen - kidnapped children from Christian families that then were raised in Muslim tradition and used to wage war and attack Christian. No compulsion in relgion, anyone?

Edit
P.S. I forgot to mention the often made most obvious argument: the quoted passage must be seen in a context of being valid only for Muslims. And yes, for Muslims it is no compulsion to believe what defines them as Muslim in Quranic understanding. I also must no violate myself to be what I am!

In German:

http://www.moschee-schluechtern.de/t...blauaeugig.htm

Saudi Arabia isn't the problem, they are in very good relations with the US. So you better just amble along there pardner since the US don't take kindly to strangers talking badly about their friends. :shucks:

Iran? Well the recent history of Iran hasn't given them much reason to trust the west or the US in particular. Shah and the Iran vs. Iraq war with US giving significant backing to Iraq spring to mind.

The foundation of Hamas was at least partially helped along by Israel and Mossad that saw it as a way to counter PLO and to drive a wedge between the Palestinians. At some point the plan backfired and Hamas became more radicalised then PLO. The history of the Palestinian situation is a lot more about the responses of the Palestinians to acts committed by Israel then the western media would like to admit.

Oh and Buckingham palace, I wish they would give it to the British people. After all, they paid for it, and for the royal family who lives there. Too bad they can't sell the royal family, who would want to buy, say, Charles?

Sounds fair enough.

Er... hold on there a minute... that's not what the Muslims here are saying when they speak about the exact same section of the Quran that you mentioned:

http://www.islamtoday.com/showme2.cf...sub_cat_id=607

:haha::har::har::rotfl2::har::rotfl2::har:

Thank God (Allah?) that we have an expert here to explain it to us!

I can't even be bothered to read the rest of your post, you Ignoring Me Person. Preach on! And on. And on... :zzz:

I hope you have the time to do so now, then.:DL

NP. I hope you'll extend me the same courtesy.

Honestly, I doubt the US would have stayed neutral for long. I see FDR's pro-anglican agenda as a modifed repeat of Wilson's ultimate decision to get involved in WW1. I consider neither to be acceptable.



As usual, you make some good points, NS. Had the British capitulated utterly, there would have been no need for an Afrika Korps, and the British barely won the battle of Britain (mostly due to Hitler's sanction of the bombing of British cities, rather than airfields)

However, Sealion was not only not likely to be successful - it was a myth.

Hitler knew quite well that he lacked the means to invade England. He actually considered the English to be Germanic peoples (which they kind of are- the English language and culture bear a remarkable degree of similarity to the German, though Hitler apparently failed to notice the similarities between English and "non-aryan" cultures)

He made many attempts to negotiate peace with both England and France, but they were firmly rejected. Germany did not want a war with England and/or France, but France and England wanted a war with Germany.

Sealion was Hitler's last gambit to force English surrender or peace terms, but it was a bluff. There was absolutely no way to protect an armada of conscripted river barges and coastal vessels through air superiority and Kriegsmarine surface forces. Many, if not most, people make the mistake of assuming that the Royal Air Force prevented the invasion of England. How quickly they forget about the Royal Navy.....

Hitler had some crazy ideas, but he was not really an idiot or a madman(in the clinical sense). Idiots and madmen don't readily coup nations of educated and industrious people and lead them to unprecedented military advances, and we would be remiss to dismiss that fact- tyrants rarely take pains to present themselves as such. Hitler knew damn well that he could not invade England, and Churchill knew it, too.

HOI(I love that game:DL) logistics aside, it is quite impossible for ad-hoc shore-dependant landing craft to effectively deliver an army across the channel in the face of naval superiority. Think about it for a moment. The English Channel is a fairly rough seaway, by virtue of the fact that it is a fairly narrow waterway that lies within the area of waters affected by the Gulf Stream.
Currents and winds there would have severely impeded the progress of the low-powered barges the Germans were using as landing craft, and a destroyer or PT boat amongst them would have wreaked absolute havoc - indeed, the wash of a destroyer steaming along at 20-25 knots alone would have been enough to swamp most of the converted river barges.

No one with even a rudimentary grasp of logistics would have even attempted an invasion of Britain while she controlled the seas - Hitler included. Britain had a very weak military at the time that Operation Sealion was being effected, but even a weak military or a purely partisan force can easily defeat a regular military when the latter is stranded and devoid of supplies.

Even the D-Day force could not launch a truly effective amphibious invasion with the benefit of complete naval and air superiority, and the vast majority of the Wehrmacht elsewhere. Ground forces were held up for months, and all the while they were dependent upon supplies. Supplies they only received because of overwhelming allied naval and air support, and still they faltered in the face of bad terrain and determined resistance. The Germans would not have had the luxury of consistent supply routes. Their craft would have faced constant harrassment from the Royal Navy in the form of nighttime destroyer and patrol craft raids, at least. Hitler knew this, and Sealion was just a bluff.

If Hitler had won against England, I doubt the additional forces made available to him would have made much of a difference. As both of us have mentioned, he chose to divert the main thrust of the German attack. A few extra divisions which undoubtedly would have been devoted to that purpose would not have made any difference.

Bearing in mind that Hitler would have ended up diverting divisions to Yugoslavia and Greece no matter what (because the Italians were being driven back and held in the Balkans), I don't see much difference in the outcome of the war. Leningrad and Stalingrad were nothing more than manpower sumps. Common military wisdom dictates that fortified positions must be either surrounded or bypassed with the intent of cutting them off from supply and reinforcement, or at least attacked from the least fortified approach. Bolstered by the previous success of the Wehrmacht, which, ironically, employed this principle, Hitler assumed that his forces would simply crush the Russians. He said himself that he desired to crush the Russian Army in the field.

In any case, Hitler's division of the Wehrmacht would not have achieved success. Even if Leningrad and Stalingrad somehow had been captured, it would have made little difference. His decision to waste manpower and momentum on the capture of these cities sealed his fate. At the time of the first major Soviet offensive in 42', the Russians outnumbered the Germans by a considerable margin, and no amount of tactical ingenuity, nor the capture of the cities could have changed that. :rotfl2:As if Leningrad and Stalingrad were significant contributors to Soviet wartime production. It was already too late for them.

Admittedly, the Germans could possibly have reversed their fortunes if they had contracted the front and launched a counterattack using Schwerpunkt tactics the following year, but Hitler chose to order them to hang on and defend every inch of territory.

Well..... whatever. The point is that Hitler simply lacked the resources for a prolonged war with a nation that had such vastly superior resources and territory.

I seriously doubt that. Italy was almost a third-rate military power. Its' tactics, troops, and equipment(with a few possible exceptions like the excellent Semovente) were inferior. C'mon, man, the Italian military made regular use of .22 caliber pistols as sidearms. Do I really need to go more into depth about their inadequacy? Look at the lengths they went to to conqueor Ethiopia, of all nations. Failing that, look at the performance of the Italian military in WW1 and the "differences" between WW1 Italian tactics and WW2 Italian tactics.

I don't think Italy could have handled anything on its' own.

Important, or very trivial? I can hardly imagine that supplying a nation with a comparitively small supply of inferior war material would somehow assist a nation relying upon inferior war material and tactics when that nation's forces are being decimated by superior troops and tactics.
The Soviet Union won by virtue of numbers alone. Numbers that far surpassed the effect allied imports of equipment. It isn't as if the Soviets stood a chance against German tactics and equipment in 41', so why would they somehow do better against the Germans using similarly inferior equipment delivered in comparitively small quantities?
It does, indeed. It depends upon the circumstance of Hitler changing his entire wartime strategy, a prospect I find highly dubious.

Hrmmm.........

I have a number of contentions with this argument, but I'm going to boil them down to the contention that German war industry simply could not confront the odds it was presented with, no matter what resources it had.

There are only so many persons eligible for military service within a nation. By 43' Germany was throwing almost every eligble person at the Soviets. By 45' it was throwing many ineligeble people at the Soviets. Troops are only as good as their training. Military equipment is only as good as the troops who man it. Tactics are only as good as the quality of troops and equipment who execute them.

The fact of the matter is that even if Germany had not been impeded by allied bombing, it would have lost the war after 41' because it simply did not have the manpower, all other things being equal. This is evidenced by the continued and drastic cuts in training regimens for all regular Wehrmacht, and later Volksturm and Luftwaffe, ground divisions, not to mention Luftwaffe schwaders and fliegerkorps.

Of course, the German armed forces continued to field battle-hardened and superior troops almost until the end of the war, but the problem was that an increasing number of them were getting OTJ experience rather than proper training. There is something to be said for combat experience as a tutor, it surpasses any kind of peacetime training. The only problem with it is that when your instructor is an enemy rifle division, you have just a few moments to learn your lesson, and those who do not learn the lesson generally end up being prisoners or casualties. Thus, the problem of Germany's inferior manpower base was compounded by high "dropout" rates in its' military education system.:DL

I'm sure we could debate this forever, and we can if you wish, but in my mind there are too many things that do not add up when it comes to the "success" of the Allied bombing campaign.

Postwar evaluations showed that only one in five Allied daylight bombers bombed within five miles of its target, and most of those targets were, through both intention and misjudgement, not war material production facilities. I tend to believe those findings because even with the recent advent of "smart" bombs and satellite recon, bombing campaigns have never been as successful as they have been made out to be.

Given the political and military atmosphere in WW2, and the nature of politics and the military in general, I am inclined to believe revisionist historians who slight the allied bombing campaign. There was a lot more to be gained by portraying the campaign as a success than there was to actually stop and consider it.

Stalin, who was regarded as a crucial element of the allied war effort, had been pushing hard for Western Allied invasion and intervention. He was understandably displeased with allied reluctance to commit to the creation of a Western front, but the bombing campaign was seen as a way to appease him while a feasible invasion was put together.

Furthermore, Air Force generals and strategists were hardly going to admit that they were throwing away vast amounts of men and material for the results they achieved. They do this to this very day. Generals of all kinds do this to this very day, to some extent, but it was a lot more apparent in WW2. Strategic bombing in its then-current manifestation was an antiquated concept at the start of the war. German planners realized this and focused on the development of medium bombers and other aircraft intended to provide direct support to ground forces (Too bad for the Kriegsmarine, eh?:DL) Allied planners did not realize this, and spent considerable energy developing weapons that, until the advent of the Norden bombsight, could only drop bombs within a very, very wide radius of targets that looked like they might be war factories from tens of thousands of feet away. Even when the Norden sight came into widespread use, the bombers were still operating on reconnaisance information from planes that were tens of thousands of feet away from the targets. Utter stupidity, if you ask me.

Finally, consider the allied use of "terror-bombing". It isn't as if allied war planners were so stupid or evil that they just suddenly decided to drop bombs on population centers. At the time, even they knew that the bombing campaign wasn't really working, so they logically switched from targets they could not identify or hit to targets they could identify and hit, namely sprawling urban areas. The failure of that tactic is not due to the ineptitude of the men who concieved it so much as it is due to the resolute determination of the German people and their (sometimes forced) conscripts.

Despite all these failures, school history textbooks often identify the allied bombing campaign as a success, while they hardly mention the inefficacies of a strategy that was outdated in 1939. I think it has more to do with propaganda and the public perpetuation of propaganda than with truth.

Well I should hope that Germany would be a heap of rubble after the amount of planes, men, and bombs we dropped on it. The losses that the 8th Air Force sustained were atrocious. Rubble-nation or no, that does not make the bombing campaign a good or effective strategy.

Bear in mind that the whole purpose of strategic bombing was to destroy the enemy's means of production. In that regard, the campaign was a complete failure, but it is regarded as a success by many to this day. Ask yourself why.

I've already made my arguments on this point, but I will point out one- no, two, additional things.

Firstly, I will restate that German wartime production prior to the war was crap. That's why most of the German military went into France and Poland on foot or on horses, rather than with mechanized means, and that continued for years. I have no doubt that German industry in general was quite impressive compared to other European nations - Indeed, I believe that it was a prime cause for the war, but by the time it was converted for military production it was already too late.

Secondly, I have no doubt that German industry was shattered by the end of the war, but that does not necessarily indicate the efficacy of the allied bombing campaign. As I said before, German war industries and supply lines were halted by troops, not by aircraft.

Oh, and one more thing. This is going a bit OT, but I can hardly resist the temptation to push my lassiez-faire economic stance when the opportunity presents itself:DL. I know that a lot of money and effort went into rebuilding German industry, and that most accounts will reflect that, but do some reading on what actually caused the German resurgence known as the Wirtschaftswunder. It wasn't foreign aid or the designs of the allied economic planners that took control of German industry after the war. It was a man named Ludwig Erhardt, who abolished price controls and centralist planning on a Sunday while the allied embassies were closed.

Last point first. I was being sarcastic when I called Hitler's actions decent. There is no way to consider Hitler or Stalin's actions decent. They were both evil.

And it may surprise you to know that I have actually done a great deal of reading on the Holocaust. I am fully aware of the atrocities committed and the perversions that were Mengele's experiments. However, I am also a great deal more aware than most people of similar transgressions committed by Stalin's regime, and those that followed. Don't think for a moment that painful medical procedures and dehumanization were not a part of the Soviet holocaust. Read some of Solzhenitsyn's works.

I do not claim that the Jews suffered less than those under Stalin's rule. I only claim that they suffered about the same as those under Stalin's rule and that more people were broken and destroyed by Stalin.

This is an aside, but I can't bear to keep silent, What really pisses me off is the concept of rememberance. One would think that a people who had experienced a terrible holocaust would be out for blood when other people experienced the same tragedy, even if it is on a lesser scale.

Given the prevalence of Jews in the US media, one would think that there might be some groundbreaking movies or television shows about the slaughter of the Armenians or the Kurds or the Eastern European Muslims or the many peoples that have been regularly subject to extermination in Africa. Where is the Jewish outrage over those atrocities? Where are the movies and documentaries that would bring them into the public consciousness in the spirit of "never again"?


That is a very brave assumption. Hitler's tendency to exterminate or enslave "inferior" peoples is not in question, but Stalin's tendency to exterminate or enslave everybody is. I seriously doubt that any Communist agenda would make Hitler's regime seem like a picnic.

Of this I have no doubt. Nonetheless, I would rather be crushed, suffocated, or gassed to death than to have to live for five, ten, or twenty-five years in ghoulish slave-labor conditions.

I should know. I've been gassed with riot agents in unventilated chambers on a number of occasions as part of my Marine Corps training. It sucks more than you can imagine. Your lungs and throat burn. You inhale, but you don't feel like you are getting any air. You begin to choke on your own breath. Given enough time, you will suffocate yourself or choke yourself with your own mucus, even though there is enough air to survive.
Even so, I'd prefer death by that method to a tenner or a quarter in the Gulag. Life can be bad enough that death seems like a release.


I doubt that. German rule under Hitler would have been bad, but nowhere near as bad as Stalinist domination.

Why we didn't just stay on our side of the pond and let the evils destroy each other is utterly beyond me. I mean, for ******** sake, what did we, as a nation, stand to gain from interventionist policy?

I really don't find Hitler to be a psychopath, and we would remiss to treat him as such. He was a very clever and intuitive person. He was a master of politics and popular appeal(and rhetoric:DL). He had some skewed ideas, but that doesn't make him or people like him any more identifiable or any less of a threat in the present day. I know that Hitler entertained the idea of a war with England and France, but in Mein Kampf he mentions those plans as contingencies.

I also seriously doubt that Hitler wrote Mein Kampf with the intention of decieving the world as to his intentions. It doesn't add up. He was a smart guy, but he wasn't so smart as to draft a false personal statement with the intention of deceiving the populace that he sought to control.

Occham's razor serves us well in evaluating Hitler's pre-war intentions.

Negatory. Poland's claims to Danzig were garbage, and the soon-to-be allied nations knew it. Regardless of Danzig's prior history, the majority of its population was agitating for German rule. That in itself should have been justification for annexation, but Britain and France had motives more pressing than the self-determination of a military dictatorship like Poland. They feared a unified and complete Germany. They feared a large and complete central European power, and rightly so. German industry would have dominated and surpassed French and English industry, just as it does today, and the political effects would have been felt by politicians of those nations.

As I mentioned before, the Polish war guarantee was a travesty. England and France knew very well that they could not protect Poland, but they decided to guarantee its independence anyway. That course of action does not make sense, unless one views it through the eyes of Churchill, a demagogue no less threatning than Hitler. I'll refer you to his personal memoirs and a number of works based upon them if you do not believe me.

Argrfarglwrfarghl.........You have got to be kidding me, NS. I really hate to post a brief response to this but I'm quite tired of typing, and I have great deal of typing to do yet.

Your assumption is not without merit. There is good reason to believe that Germany and its empire might have out-produced the US and Canada, or even the entire Western Hemisphere, but why on earth would you assume that such an outcome was feasible? Why would European superiority of production be a bad thing? Why would Germany nuke the US, especially given Hitler's affinity for America, if the US had remained neutral?

I love HOI2, but it is not a realistic simulation.:DL I have two methods of play. One is to completely disregard other nations and focus on military development, using schwerpunkt to encircle and defeat their forces in the field. The other is to just make peace with everybody and stay out of the wars. I prefer the former because it is more fun, but IRL I would go for the latter, because I have no right to decide the fate of nations.

Anyhow, there is no reason to believe that that strategy would have worked for Germany. The point has been stated in many ways by many people, but the idea that logistics are key to the success of any military endeavour is sound. Germany (and the rest of the Axis) did not, and would never have possesed the logistic capacity to take over the Eastern Hemisphere, let alone the world. The supposed Axis intent to take over the world was allied propaganda and nothing more.

Stop and think for a moment, NS. How in the hell would Axis forces usurp the sovereignty of all or even most governments, short of physically occupying their territory? Where would they procure the logistic means to do so? Why would they have been more successful than the Soviet Union, an admittedly Communist and therefore ultimately worldwide force?

Yes, it sucks, does it not?

Going back to the original topic of this thread, this is part of the reason why I love rednecks. Many of them are Christian fundamentalists, and they will not tolerate dissent, but at least they have a healthy respect for both their own religions and individualism. They are practically immune to foreign religous and political influence, and they protect their rights with guns. How fun is that!?:DL

Sure, they annoy me with their constant attempts to convince me to join a Baptist congregation and sing and wave my arms in the air like some kind of idiot (Presbyterians have more dignity than that:DL), but at least they don't go around bombing troops or masses of civilians.

Annoying though they may be, I find a comfort in knowing that rednecks are around. They provide a sort of "conversion-proof barrier" to Islam's both insidious and violent tactics.

You can do better than that, NS. You and I both know that stone-age native Americans are hardly comprable to Palestinian Jews in the 20th century.

Damn you, wikipedia:DL

Do you have any idea, NS, how much I hate wikipedia references in forum discussions? Do you have any idea what kind of consternation they cause me?:rotfl2:

Now I have to check the source and read the whole damn google books .pdf rendition of To Rule Jerusalem. Do you know what a pain in the ass that is?:DL

Actually, I don't have a problem with researching sources. To Rule Jerusalem is an interesting book. I only wish that I had the time to read the whole thing and thereby establish proper context before making this post.

Well, in any case, the reference states that while Israel was subject to nearly 1,000 years of intermittent Jewish rule, it was subject to over 2,000 years of Arab and Islamic rule. I still think that the Palestinian claim was valid, and the Israeli occupation and the intervention of US forces was unjustified.

I'm less than a quarter of the way through the book, but the author admittedly makes a decent case for Jewish control or partial control of Palestine. I'll have to read the whole thing before I come to a decision, if I ever come to one. Quite frankly, I'm still getting the impression that the US would have been better served by staying out of this complex and volatile matter.


Interesting points. I'll have to do some research to establish their validity. I never really considered anti-semitism in nations besides Germany, Poland, Czecheslovakia, and Russia. Off the top of my head, I think that that idea may explain a lot of things.

No, that's what states, countries, and persons of influence do to each other, and they force their subjects to comply.

Interesting argument, and I think you may be right. It may well be impossible to defelct Islamic wrath onto Europe, no matter how logical the premise.

For now, I will concede the point.

I think that we are agreed. We agree that Islamic Holy war predated the Crusades, yes?

Negatory. Israel is a less than useless place to project airpower or anything else. Its reliability is not in question, but its strategic position is. Notwithstanding the instability of the region, it has a number of other shortcomings. The terrain is quite unsuitable for mass armor deployment, and Israel lies at the most inaccesible edges of a number of potentially hostile Islamic nations. Worse yet, its Mediterranean waterfront creates a veritable bottleneck for seaborne invasion forces. As if that weren't enough, Israel's position requires land and air forces to cross sovereign, potentially hostile, and comparitively oil-poor nations like Syria and Jordan to reach oil-rich nations. I can hardly think of a more disaster-prone area to base an offensive from.

We are agreed upon the point that intevention is almost never done for proper reasons.

Therein lies the beauty of capitalism. Trading all things is humanity's favorite pastime, next to killing or coercing each other.

It may change things, and it may not. It takes only one person to change the ideals of many. Conversely, it takes only one person to not affect anything of consequence. Our discussions may or may not enable us to develop opinions of consequence, but there is no reason we shouldn't try, so long as we enjoy them.

Thanks, NS.

Skybird claimed that the whole book/ideology was from the pits of hell (my paraphrasing). I only need one counter example to disprove that bollocks.

Why don't you read for yourself what actual Muslims (thousands of them) have to say. Muslim forums are easy to find on the web. Here's a couple of posts by Muslim people in Muslim forums (mostly from the UK) that I've been browsing:

On the subject of Islamic Values:
A reply on that same topic:
My favourite, on the subject of stoning (to death):
Here's a Muslim guy talking about that US Muslim soldier who went on a killing spree:
Nasty. Here are some of the replies from his Muslim Brothers:

Weird... they sort of sound like regular people having a regular forum debate? How do they do that? I guess it must be some sort of conspiracy to fool us into thinking they're okay?

There are many, many, many more threads and posts. I don't doubt that somewhere there are extremist Muslim forums as well, but there's extremist anything if you want to find it (looks at Skybird)

No one ever claimed that all of them are extremists.;)
I sometimes do not even believe that most of them know what they are used for but let's face it, if the imam says to go on the streets because of some caricatures then a lot of them go. Where are the public mass protests against that idiot that killed his fellow comrades? A few lines on a forum is all that got up. Nothing in comparison with what we see when the west "offended" Islam again....
And of course there are good guys among Muslims like in any group of people and I never wanted to make the impression that I hate each and every Muslim. It's their ambitious leadership and the silent condoning of violent acts that I don't like.

If that all isn't enough then let me point to the way they treat women again. That alone is already enough for me to not want their culture being spread throughout Europe and the rest of the world.
One example:
Recently a young girl, only 10 years old, tried to escape from her "husband" who is already 80 (!!!) years old in Saudi Arabia. The girls was brought back to that guy by her father. The "husband's" statement was that this form of "marriage" does not violate any Islamic law...(I'm afraid I can only find this link right now...http://atheism.about.com/b/2009/10/0...ld-husband.htm)
Excuse me, but a culture that openly condones and supports child molesting is nothing I want to see grow here.

I have a friend who lived together with a Muslim man for some time and her reports of how she was treated by that guy raised my blood pressure more than just a little (locked away, beaten....)
Again, do you want their influence and their symbols of power grow in Europe?

wow, that's a real gem.

Nice try, but couple of flaws with that argument. For one thing, the main focus of Nazi anti-semitism, was based in racism. They believed that the semitic races were inferior and sub human, and attacked them based on racial characteristics and stereotypes. Sure they also hated the Jewish faith as well. But the key motivation behind the final solution was true racism, that is why they also attacked people who's ancestors were Jewish though they themselves were not.

Second, anti-semitism is the hatred of semitic people, which are not all Jewish. It has though been taken over to mostly mean hatred of jewish people. This sort of makes sense as most jewish people are of Semitic origins.

This is different from the debate here as we are intellectually criticizing the religion itself, not the people behind the religion, which is why it isn't racism. Just as intellectually criticizing the Jewish religion is not anti-semitism.

As a further comment, Judism is not only a religion, but also a culture (and refered to a race as well, if you ascribe to concepts of race, which I don't). Unlike Islam and Christianity, there are specific cultural ties to the religion. Islam and Christianity are cross cultural, in that there is not a specific culture associated with it (though certain cultures are predominate with in the religions).

My criticism is not based on hatred of Islam, nor do I hate people because they believe in Islam, but rather my intellectual concerns with Islam itself. This is also why it is not Islamophobia, as its not a phobic reaction, or an irrational fear. My worries are firmly based in rationality.

Sorry, run that by me again? You don't have a problem with Muslim people, you just have a problem with Islam? So, if someone waved a magic wand and got rid of "Islam" but left all the Muslims... what exactly is it that the wand would have removed from the world?

Schroeder, your post will take more time to reply to than the above so I'll do it later cos I have work to finish (I'm not ignoring it).

Take your time, this is not a competition.:)

Schroeder, that story.
The child bride still lives with her family.
The judges ruled the marriage contract where the father sought a dowry was valid . They also ruled that the father or the proposed husband were the only ones who can currently break the contract. The girl herself can apply to get out of the deal once she reaches puberty.
But while we are at it, you talk of these "values" being alien to the west, look at the history of child brides throughout western history, look at current marriage legislation in "christian" countries colonised by europe. Look at the recent thing down in Texas with the mormons and their child brides...mormonism is totally western in its origins isn't it.
BTW Sharia sets the age at 9 doesn't it. Christinity would have its scriptural law based on talmudic law wouldn't it ? that sets the age at 3:hmmm:

Is it?
What is a Jew?
Cuts both ways, not all Jewish people are semitic.

Spousal abuse is unfortunately quite common throughout the world and apperently always has been.

Any links to that? Not that I don't believe you but I want to read it first before I reply on it.

I never said I want to see those guys rise in power as well now, did I. Besides I never heard them demanding those rights in Germany (at least not during the time I'm alive). I'm not familiar with the Mormon's child brides, but it sounds just as perverted as the Muslim stuff. Any form of child molesting and sexual abuse is a crime in my book. If non Islamic organisations should try to introduce these forms of "culture" here I will be as much against it as I am against Islam.

Unfortunately I don't have time right now to construct a thorough reply to your recent post, and only had time to skim it quickly so far. I am going to have to back bench responding for a couple of weeks weeks at least, till towards the end of December, once final exams are over.

I will admit though that my last post to you was lacking a bit and that I only was able to devote 3 hours to it (was late to class too). I'll fix that though when I have the time to devote to replying in detail again :DL

I also apologize for referencing Wikipedia. I don't much care using it, as it is very lacking, but in that case it saved me having to type out the same basic stuff. I plan on my future reply to look more in to the on topic stuff (and Palestine/Israel), and leave off on the "what if ww2" speculation as we could debate and argue about the possibilities till the end of the universe.

As a quick comment though, Hitler would defiantly score highly on the psychopathy checklist (PCL-R). Check it out yourself (and ya some wiki again :oops:). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hare_Psychopathy_Checklist
http://www.arkancide.com/psychopathy.htm
http://www.mental-health-matters.com...=article&id=94
Most people though do not understand what a psychopath/sociopath (they mean the same thing) is. Psychopaths usually do not have comorbidity in that they do not often have other mental illnesses, and are not psychotic (they usually have a firm grasp of reality) in nature. Hitler was probably one of the more rare cases showing comorbidity, where in addition to being psychopathic, he was also psychotic.

If you like though try filling out the checklist from the second link based on what you know about Hitler (do it for Stalin (and anyone else) too if you like, he probably also qualifies). A score of 30 or higher indicates you are dealing with a full blown psychopath, normal is below 10 (4 or 6 I think is the average score for most people), in between you are dealing with someone with psychopathic tendancies (many or some).

I have a problem with what people do under the name of Islam, and what the religion itself commands. But I do not hate them because they follow a specific religion. For example I don't have many issues with more modernized versions of Islam, that doesn't try to subjugate the female sex, or mutilate them, or all the other things I bring up.

My issues are of an intellectual nature due to much of the Islamic world violating the most basic beliefs I hold, that one should be free to believe what ever they wish, provided it doesn't impact anyone else negatively. I don't hate someone because they believe in Islam. I get angry when they try to take a hypocritical or self superior route over others.

The underlined bit is the attitude that worries me.