[LN2Campy]

Under the Koran, the term "infidel" means "pagan" -- Christians and Jews are regarded as "people of the book" and are recognized as sharing, with islam, a spiritual tradition. They are not regarded as "infidels". That being said, nowadays there is currently a lot of persecution of Christians and Jews by Muslims in this world. For many centuries, however, significant minority populations of Jews and Christians survived, and even thrived in Islamic lands. Now they tend to be leaving. Look at the Coptics in Egypt or the Iranian Jews. Anyway, we should not view these problems as part and parcel with terrorism inflicted under the perversion of islam proffered by the likes of Osama the goat-buggerer and his Al-Qaeda boys. Tony C. is correct -- cleaning out these terrorists does not require that we prosecute WWIII.

[Anamensis]

Under the Koran, the term "infidel" means "pagan" -- Christians and Jews are regarded as "people of the book" and are recognized as sharing, with islam, a spiritual tradition. They are not regarded as "infidels".

And as such, the Koran says that they may live as long as they live under Islamic rule and pay tribute and "know themselves to be subdued." That was why they were allowed to live in the Ottoman Empire relatively peacefully. But they are not allowed to exist independently of Islam, at least, not according to the Koran. Moreover, the Koran says pretty clearly that atheists and pagans CAN be killed, so I'm not really up for being all warm-n-fuzzy with a religion that wants to kill Buddhists, Hindus, animists (how do you think Islam got so far in Africa?) and most of all, perfectly nice atheists like ME! So as far as I'm concerned, Islam has declared war on ME and I am perfectly willing to hate them back full-on.