Net Neutrality--Google--Fairness Doctrine.

[--Pete]

Hi,

First, just a friendly request. Please use a few line breaks in your posts. They read fine on the board, but when I go to answer, they become a continuous unit, with quote tags in-line. On a big post like this one, it takes me about five minutes just to go through it and break apart the quotes just to keep track of the flow. Your choice, of course, but I would appreciate it

. . . but a group can be of many minds.

Yes, it can. And the anti-Muslim attitude is based on condemning the group for the minds of some.

I believe he, like many clerics, is also somewhat subversive.

Every religious leader is subversive, if by subversive you mean desiring all to believe as he does. The conviction that you are right and everyone else is wrong is the basis for being a religious leader. Some are more tolerant than others.

The point I was making is that it isn't a religion that drives people to killing, it is ignorance

It is religion. It may be an ignorant religion, but it is not the ignorance that causes them to believe in witchcraft, it is their ignorant world view of how the universe works that causes the belief. And that belief is their religion.

I'm not against them building a mosque. . . . When I say Shrine, I mean shrine.

I see. A Mosque is OK, a Shrine is not. And you get to decide which is which?

From the Ottowa Citizen, by Raheel Raza and Tarek Fatah, members of the board of the . . .

I do not know anything of that group, their affiliations, their religious beliefs. I do know that Islam is fragmented into many mutually antagonistic groups. Without a hell of a lot more information, which I just will not bother to get, I cannot tell if that letter is on the level or the equivalent of the JW giving public advice to the Catholics.

If they wanted to build a bridge, then proceed with the community center with a multi-cultural appeal with a mosque, a synagogue, and a non-denominational christian church. Here all the faiths of the book can co-exist and get to know each other.

I’m for that. However, I don’t see why the Muslims should pay for places of worship for other religions. But if all are willing to do this, then that indeed would be a bridge.

This is how we muffed up Vietnam. We couldn't win, and we wouldn't leave.

Yes. But another rant completely. One in which I suspect we would be singing in harmony.

Generally, I find that the American people have to be deceived in order for them to give their assent. Once the deception is revealed, the majority calls for an end to the war.

Then they are deceived often and easily.

Well, how about Raufs own words

?
I’m with Jester.

But, Rauf is a proselytizing Islamic missionary called upon to spread his religion based in lower Manhattan.

I’ve never had an Islamic missionary knock on my door. I’ve had quite a few Christian ones of one stripe or another. I’m sure that I’ll be able to resist the sales pitch of the one with my experience of the other.

. . . "the unanimous opinion of modern biblical criticism is that Deuteronomy is not the work of Moses, as is the traditionally held opinion, but that it was, in its main parts, written in the seventh century B.C., during the reign of Josiah."

So, the Bible should be our guide. But only the parts we like?

In other words, a "found" lost work of Moses written to impose new laws on the people. Modern Christians and Jews read the works in the context of who and how they were written.

By ‘modern’ do you mean ‘those with a modern outlook’ or ‘those who are our contemporaries’? Because there are many people alive right now who are fundamentalist in their religion and obey Deuteronomy to a large extent.

The modern enlightened ones are silent, or perhaps do not exist.

Or perhaps just aren’t newsworthy?

This says it better than I can.

--Pete