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To: Stultis
"In fact exposing the impostitures of fake moderates is one of the most important ways we can support real moderate Muslims."

The problem with your entire premise is your obstinate refusal to realize that ISLAM ITSELF IS NOT MODERATE.
46 posted on 11/19/2006 7:29:04 PM PST by EnochPowellWasRight
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To: EnochPowellWasRight
The problem with your entire premise is your obstinate refusal to realize that ISLAM ITSELF IS NOT MODERATE.

Neither is Judaism or Christianity, by the standard you apply to Islam: i.e. woodenly following scripture (supposedly, although this is in fact impossible) without interpretation.

If Christians or Jews followed their books in the same fashion that you imply Muslims must do, then they would be killing witches, enforcing strict laws of diet, clothing, hairstyles, covering womens' heads in churches (and confiscating their jewelery) even possibly carrying out campaigns of mass genocide if so ordered by God (as Moses and Joshua supposedly were).

Very few Jews or Christians read or interpret their holy books in such fashion. Granted that Muslims do so, but that's no reason to insist that they're RIGHT in doing so, as you (and the Islamists) do.

Granted that most followers of religion believe that their religious practice is more or less rigidly determined by the content of their holy books, but in reality that's just a happy delusion. In fact, and quite obviously on the most cursory examination, all major religions have undergone vast amounts of evolutionary change over time, and are constantly continuing to do so.

Islam (or any major religion) is not determined by what some book says, but entirely by how its adherents practice it. Every holy book, the Koran included, is potentially compatible with a wide and diverse array of practice. Every major religion is highly diverse, and the diversity of Islam is our strongest weapon against our enemy in preventing him from accruing power and influence.

I continue to be mystified by how strongly you wish to deny the reality of this diversity (the same thing our enemy is trying to do with his own internal propaganda) instead of using it against our enemy.

The Koran admittedly presents some special problems, having been written by a founder who was a warrior and a violent man, and one who wedded his religion to the politics of the state, but such problems can ALWAYS be overcome by interpretation. (For instance those Muslims who reject the integration of religion and politics note that the modern state did not exist in any meaningful sense in the time of Mohammad.) Why do you wish to deligitimize those are have overcome these problems by denying them recognition as speaking for Islam?

47 posted on 11/19/2006 9:50:56 PM PST by Stultis
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