[HollyB]

Good post, thanks for all of your clarification. I really don’t like to get mean spirited. By the way, I’ve read verses, bits and pieces - online, ususally as a means of referencing. I’ve never read the entire book and honestly, I’m not that interested in doing so. I remember as a teen, my father came very close to moving us to SA. Life as a teen girl in SA would have been difficult. I’m glad we didn’t go, although I know why he wanted to go - big bucks were being made there at the time.

[Cronos]

By the way, I’ve read verses, bits and pieces - online, ususally as a means of referencing. I’ve never read the entire book and honestly, I’m not that interested in doing so

That's the key thing. If you read bits and pieces you may not get the entire grasp of things. For instance, if you read the Mein Kampf in it's entirety you realise the scary truth that Adolf wrote down exactly what he was going to do and you also realise that he was a madman with his incoherent, disjointed writing. And that's true about the Sunnah and Hadiths.

[Cronos]

interesting -- I take it that you are European-American? SA is horrible, truly horrible place to be. The rest of the Gulf is actually pretty pleasant -- I liked Bahrain a lot but it's gotten too modern now for my taste -- like Dubai which I find too crass. I really like Oman. however, the Sauds are truly despised by other Arabs and SA is bad. Ok, in the expat enclaves you can do what you want, but outside there, you as a woman would need to cover every inch of skin and even your eyes shouldn't show. You cannot drive a car or even leave the house without a man to escort you about.

I really despise the cult for having destroyed the glory that was Persia though (and I'm talking about Sassanid and Achaemanid Persia, the Iran or Arya-stan of Cyrus the Great and Darius the Mede)

[Cronos]

Yes, I know it can be hard to be civil on these forums. And, I know where both of you are coming from — people are at heart people and decent no matter where they come from. Philosophies can be evil, not people. I’ve learnt through reading through the histories of the ME, Iran, India, the Balkans etc. that the only way is conversion. The “religion” is incompatible with living with other folks. Just wikipedia “Moghals” — you’ll read about how the 3rd Mughal Emperor, Akbar was beloved of both his Hindu and M subjects and how he was a fair, just ruler who ended jaziya. His son Jehangir and grandson Shah Jehan too were secular largely, but his great-grandson, Aurangzeb was a fanatic who went on a rampage against Hindus and inevitably turned them against him. What does that tell us? That Akbar and Jehangir would probably have been the decent sort that your friends probably are, but the philosophy twists people down the line. Ditto for the lot that conquered Coptic Egypt