How Widespread is this Point of View?

[eppie]

From a cultural point of view, I am personally unsympathetic to Islam as it exists in the modern world, and how it has shaped various societies and cultures that exist in the present.  I've been dealing on and off with the so called "war on terror," or rather, the Modern/Western civilizations attempts to deal with Muslim terrorists since 1983.  The issue has been of significance since 1972, Munich, Black September, slaughter of Olympic athletes for political purposes. 

I do not blieve that Islam has had its Rennaisance, as Christianity has, that opened a pathway for it to integrate into the modern world.  FWIW, Christianity still has its hands full in dealing with The Modern World.  Cultures based in Muslim cultural norms and habits are to some extent trapped in a medeival paradigm.  This handicaps their ability to fit into the modern world, which so far has been formulated under an olio of Western European Enlightenment thought.  Any culture with Islam so embedded is going to have a similar handicap.

Occhi
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From a cultural point of view you are "personally unsympathetic to Islam as it exists in the modern world". OK, me to, I don't like the role of the woman in Islam and many other things. But you say "cultural"... my opinion is that society shapes a religion and not the other way around (I know this is not the general opinion in the world). If you would look at the world a 1000 years ago you would see completely different things. Most muslims in arabia have very oldfashioned ideas about their religion, but look at for example christians is central afrika...they also have a very different view on christianity than christians in europe.

That is the whole thing about religion....it are the powerful people that just decide what is good and what is bad in religion (that and the fact that I cannot find absolutely any evidence of there being a God is the reason that I'm atheist btw. which is of course not the topic of this discussion). e.g. henry VIII that just invented his own religion.....and still most of england is anglican... (and everybody knows the history)

So I think that throwing words at one specific religion is not a very fair thing to do. In our world there are a lot of different levels of wealth and development....and those things are more important for the way people behave than that religion is