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Dear Bob J,

Thank you for your response. As I said, your religion allows you to say the worst and the best, it also allows you to practice Taqqya deceit. Did your prophet not say "War is deceit?"

With such a background, it is your faith that has the credibility problem. Words are cheap. Everybody loves peace and brotherhood, everybody likes pizza too.

At last count there are 30 conflicts on the planet. Islam is involved in 28 of them; 95% of all terrorist acts are Islamic. The plots are being hatched in Mosques and Islamic centers and the perpetrators are quoting ayas.

If the Islamic world were about peace and brotherhood, you wouldn't be a lone voice in the wilderness. It's that simple.

The truth of the matter is that as with Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism, Shintoism, I would love to enjoy, nay, I demand, the luxury of not knowing a single thing about your chosen religion, certain that it is safe, reasonable, calm, peaceful. Instead I and millions of others have had to learn.

I couldn't care less what your book says. I'm certain that other books have bad calls in them too. There's a whole religion Rastafarianism that is heavily based on marijuana. I'm much more inclined to dance to Bob Marley's reggae than to see what it's really all about.

If an old lady like my mother has nail clips confiscated from her hand bag at the airport before boarding... the link is with your religion, not with the Greek Orthodox or the Zen. Idem for color coded alerts. That's the music we were offered by Islam to dance to.

I have no intention of arguing your perfect interpretation. I could take out my Windows 95 and turn it into a perfect religion. I could quote all the fine promises and reasonable suggestions of Mr. Bill Gates... Yet the program crashed for me as it crashed for millions of others. Bill was very quick at upgrading. Windows 98 was better and now Windows XP is amazingly trouble free.

Bill listened to the people, Bill was responsible... Microsoft has leadership. Islam has no leadership, only a great big and heavy inertia that must be moved along by "Infidels"... Just as the Islamic world has relied on the "infidel" to upgrade its technology, so too must it rely on OUR coercion to upgrade its morality. Otherwise, for example, slavery in Darul Islam would've ended of its own accord without outside imposition.

I mention the Imam of my city, Rome being ousted by politicians. It's a sorry state of affairs when the Imam of the largest mosque in Continental Europe needs to be escorted to the border by notoriously corrupt Italian politicians. Now the politicians of other European countries are making demands. In France and Holland, sermons will soon have to be delivered in the local language and the injunctions concerning the beating of wives, or the call to Jihad will have to toned down to meet certain political standards.

Your call to conscience, though noble, will not be heeded by your co-religionists. For it is conscience itself which they have submitted.

Your call to conscience as that of other Muslims (especially those who tend to be Koran only, those who tend to soften the translations of the rough Ayas) are paradoxically all coming from Christian countries. Interesting, n'est ce pas? It means that it is not wheat of your own sack.

So in conclusion, all judgment upon your religion, as far as I'm concerned will be based on what happens spontatenously in Muslim countries.

For the time being, all I know is that you're praying towards a place where I'm not allowed to set foot... so that is Islam's bottom line regarding the concept of brotherhood - all the rest is talk, phonemes, hot air;

All I know is that the Copts of Egypt are oppressed and have difficulty in even being allowed to repair their old Churches. I'm a Christian, not a Copt, but a Christian and so in the name of Golden Rule reciprocity, I don't want to see a single mosque built in my land. (Worry not, Rome has the biggest in Europe... Rome, the capital of Catholic Christendom, whereas a Filipino worker in Saudi Arabia is not even afforded the blessing of a priest, should he collapse in the heat while laying out boiling asphalt to build a road there).

All I know is that American cities have color coded alerts and that 15,000 Italians were hired to keep eyes on the train tracks...

All I know is that Italian women in mixed marriages can lose their children if the husband takes them to see grandpa and grandma in the old country and suddenly gets an itch to remarry there.

Islam will be judged neutrally... That is, when Mother can forget her nail clips in her purse... when I can take a train here in Italy and see Arab kids come aboard with backpacks and think nothing of it. I have no such paranoias for the Indian kids, the Chinese, the Filipinos. None whatsoever.

The mistrust in places once proud of multi-culturalism has been amply earned. If you feel it, your perception is correct. You may call it racism, hate, Islamophobia, you may tag any name on it that you wish.

Like e-bay transactions, trust needs to be earned the hard way. And at the moment, only suckers would buy the Islamic used car. Because for every reasonable voice, there are 1000 preaching the vilest anti-semitism; It is calculated that 15 percent of Dutch Muslims are "Fundamentalist"... It is a fact that not a single Muslim in Rome's crowded Mosque flinched when Imam Moussa thundered and moaned his curses on entire nations and praised the oblivion of suicide bombing.

That's the way the cookie crumbles.