Could this be counter productive???

[tater]

Originally Posted by OneToughHerring

Tell me exactly how Islam in the developing world is and has been worse then say Christianity?

You really feel the need to defend Islam? Let's see, 50% of their population are in effect slaves. Property. These 50% are called "women."

50% slavery is bad enough for me to not need other reasons, but we can certainly name them.

Regarding Christianity, there were without question many Christian atrocities over the years. Regardless, progressive, western liberalism was born in "Christian" societies. I'm very open to you arguing that this was in SPITE OF Christianity, but none the less, it was allowed to succeed. Such pluralistic liberalism has never—and will never, IMHO—evolve in Muslim lands.

So your main problem is not so much with Islam but with the Arabic language? This is getting complicated.

Presumably, your problem here is a language problem. This is fine, as I don't understand ANY finnish, so I'm at a loss there.

For much of the last few hundred years, the bulk of the world's Muslim population has not actually been able to understand Arabic. The Qur'an is written in arabic. As a result, people practicing Islam were able to be fairly moderate, and even have customs at odds with "real" Islam (as practiced in, say Arabia). The most populous Muslim country, for example is Indonesia, and the fact that the vast majority of Indonesian muslims are fairly moderate I think is directly related to the fact that they can't actually read their holy book.

In places where the large majority CAN read the Qur'an, you'll note that they are MORE "fundamentalist." That's because the really awful bits in Islam are actually in the Qur'an.

My point was that increasing arabic literacy in non-arab muslim countries increases radicalism. This is demonstrable, and why "Islamism" is on the rise. The principal way that the Saudis spread their flavor of Islam is via arabic (and coincident koranic) teaching.

Keeping muslims ignorant of what the koran says is in effect a moderating influence.