I wonder who the Iranian people are going to believe after the smoke clears (no pun intended)

http://www.wtopnews.com/?nid=500&sid=1696410
http://ibb7-2.ibb.gov/pubaff/farsi001.html

A passing suggestion:

Don't know if any here have viewed the PBS series, "God on Trial." It's about Auschwich Jews putting God on trial for their predicament.

It can be viewed on Youtube.com in a 9 part series.

Several key parts of the four Gospels - for example the sermon on the mountain - speak for themselves even if ignoring the rest of the Gospels completely. You do not need historical contexts to see something valuable in them - that's why it does not matter whether they are authentic or not, and whether Jesus is a historc figure, or just a fiction. But for explaining the shape and content of the Old Testament as well as the Quran, you cannot avoid refering to historical contexts and circumstances. You cannot understand what the Quran says what it says if you ignore the figure of Muhammad. Only within the context of Muhammad's life, the shape and form of Quran makes any sense in that it can be explained why it is like it is. and since the Quran is understood to be Allah'S will, this means that Allah is limited by the intention that muhammad has put into the term.

Max had it absolutely correct when saying that the Quran is highly contradictory in itself. You can find a red guiding line only when seeing it through the life and biography of Muhammad, and superimpose Muhammad's intention over it, else it does not make any sense, and is just confused. But what you get when using Muhammad as the key to interprete it, is a conqueror's agenda who keeps his forces together by cheating and intimidation, and who prevented weakness and caused unified strength by declaring any straying off from muhammad's path a religious crime that causes most unforgiven penalties - it is not a transcending message by a holy man, but works as a tool for disciplinary penalties to keep the hierarchy and command structure of an army intact. And from that perspective the Quran all of a sudden makes a lot of sense, even more when considering that there have been several versions of the Quran who all got tailored and changed a bit by local rulers to use it to legitimise their own powerpolitics, like Muhammad did. The Quran is a document that serves as justification for Islam's claim for power and dominance - that is it's primary purpose, and that'S what it pretty much is limited to. And no matter how inferior in style and kitschig in language it is - this one purpose it serves with remarkable efficiency. But it is a work of totalitarian politics. I often said that Islam is more politics than religion.

That's what I mean when saying that in Islam, in the end all and everything is about Muhammad - not about Allah, not about Quran, not about Sharia. Because all these things go back to Muhammad whose mouth has founded them and without whom terms like Allah or Islam simply would not be known today. In that meaning I also refer to Islam as Muhammedanism - not to intentionally stirr emotions and offend people, but because it is the most precise and reasonable description of what Islam is - a personal cult rooted in the life and personality of and focussed on Muhammad. Until the world war, the term Muhammedanism was in common use to refer to Islam. that Muslims do not like it, can be explained. It reminds them of what their proclaimed devine religion in fact is about: and that is neither a superior devine entitity, nor a book of divine laws and rules that existed already from the beginning of time on. Muhammad is not just an announcer proclaiming the showact to come - Muhammad is the very star of the show itself. And that Islam cannot accept without giving up the basis of it's own identity.I personally have always seen Islam unable to reform without giving up what actually makes it "Islam". In other words: you can only reform Islam based on Quran and Muhammad - by bringing it to an end. and if it is not basing on Muhammad and the Quran, than it is not Islam. It makes no sense to define Islam any different if the term should have any meaning.

Go figure the problems coming from that.

The way I see it, most of Obama's behaviour in the current situation can be explained the following way: US interests (or those of the West in general) stay the same, even if political leaders change. Electing a president in one country (the US) doesn't change the political situation in the other country (Iran) all by itself.
That applies even more to Iran because Mr Ahmadinejad is, so to speak, only the tip of the iceberg, viz. an authoritarian regime thinly disguised as "theocracy". And even if someone else takes over in Iran, changes will not be dramatic because it's the system.
Don't confuse the government of a country (both in the US and in Iran) with long-term national interests.

You are correct. I even registered voters for the man and I admit it. What he's done is to continue the apparantly bipartisan plan of concentration of power in the executive at the expense of liberty, privacy and the Rule of Law. For me, the big news item buried in all the Iran coverage was Ahmedinijad's attendance at the Shanghai Economic Cooperation Council summit in Yekaterinburg with China, Russia, India, Pakistan and the Central Asian Republics. The dominating item under discussion there was a formulation of plans to end the dollar's role as the World Reserve Currency. If such plans come to fruition, the US's role as the dominant military and economic power well be over. The big economic players, Russia, China and India all have enormous reserves of dollars in their foreign exchange holdings that are being devalued by the Fed's continued printing of dollars and deficits going back to the Nixon administration.

Once the dollar ceases to be the Reserve currency, what's left of the bottom of the US economy will fall into a tailspin that will make the Great Depression and our current one look like a Golden Age.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/06/26/national/w090647D34.DTL



If Obama is acting like Bush acording to the president of Iran

Then who is Gernany acting like?

Israel?

I say these days of history will be th end of Iran's right to bear nuclear arms :yep:

You missed some parts.

When Muhammad started receiving his "revelations" in Mecca, he started spreading them. Part of his sermons criticized the powers that be in Mecca for their corruption, arrogance, and ignorance of the poor. This did not make him very popular among the local elites, so they decided to kill him. He got wind of the plot beforehand, so he fled, along with his followers.

He had family connections in Medina, and the local leaders decided to invite him in as a neutral arbitrator to resolve a local dispute. He agreed to arbitrate, on the condition that Medina accepted his authority and brought in his followers. They agreed. He gained a reputation as a wise and just arbitrator, and others began bringing their disputes before him. Soon he was the ruler of the city.

He then took his skill in settling disputes to another level, and began to settle disputes between warring Arab tribes. A condition of his arbitration was always that the parties involved accept his authority. Through this he united the Arab tribes under his rule. Mecca was still independent, but eventually submitted without a fight after Muhammad assembled an army to attack it.

This had all been peaceful, aside from a brief unsuccessful attack on Mecca a few years before. The first large scale use of force came when some of the tribes tried to break away, and Muhammad attacked them to force them back into the fold. After that Muhammad began to expand aggressively, conquering the Arabian peninsula and later attacking the Byzantines and Persians.

There was a bit of dispute about who should succeed Muhammad, but the Shia movement didn't really get going until the next century.

Yeah, and Bush's policy was just so effective. :roll: Why should we continue doing something which doesn't work?

What's wrong with starting with a clean slate? If Iran wants to be unreasonable, so be it. But at least give it a chance. If it doesn't work, so what?

Trying diplomacy does not make Aheorpiuzadad his buddy.

Uh... he conquered Death, Skybird. Jeez.

:D

Unfortunately, this thread is turning into yet another debate in the line of "Which religion do you believe to be the most prone to violence?" (I'm exaggerating here alright, but it the discussion has certainly gone astray).
Just to make one thing perfectly clear (from my point of view): This is not about religion in the least. If at all, religion is used to make the authority of the ruling class in Iran unquestionable by turning legitimate criticism and opposition into blasphemy. It is an abuse of religion, which could be done with any of them, and has been (even Buddhism). There are certainly both people for and people against Ahmadinejad who claim to be good muslims.

How about Obama is acting like Obama? The honey moon is over.

Now I think Obama is starting to go too far: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8122028.stm

At least he waited until after the protests had mostly put down to give Ahmadinejad the ammunition he needed. But praising Mousavi by name is still a stupid thing to do.

You can't say I didn't tell you so in this forum. :D

-S