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Eala,

There are lots of books out there that report every conceivable view point on Islam, however the truth is the truth. If you want to know what that religion teaches, just pick up a copy of the koran at your local book store, and then read it.

Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems to me that you have a bigger problem with Christians than with Moslems. While that is your option, it isn't being honest with the facts. You really show your true colors when you imply that the inquisition was "not too long ago" when in fact it was centuries ago. The inquisition and Henry VIII didn't target innocent lives on anything approaching the scale of the followers of Islam.

Centuries before the Church in Rome was filling the void created by weak national governments, Islam was invading countries and forcing their belief system on those that they conquered. Islam is spread by force, that is the primary tool of evangelism. The only reason Islam is the problem today that it is, is due to the existance of oil in them their hills. That is what brought the sleeping giant back to life, not freedom of religion or the press and certainly not capitalism. Name one country where Islam is the primary religion of the people that is not a theocracy or dictatorship. How many clear thinking freedom loving westernerns are tripping over themselves to become residents of one of the gulf states?

Like it or not, if we don't do something now to stop this menace, we or our children will be bowing in the direction of mecca 6 times per day like it or not.

Tom

The country whose religion is Islam that is not a dictatorship is Turkey. Though far from perfect, Turkey even forbids women from wearing head scarfs. It is the Modern European face of Islam, and in many ways is the heir of the Romans.

And it is 5 times a day to pray. The other requirements of Islam include:
Assert that there is no G-d but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet.
Pay the 1/40th of income alms to the poor.
Fast during Ramadan.
Travel to Mecca (the Haj) if possible once in your life.

Those are the 5 pillars of Islam.

Now, there is nothing there that makes anyone automatically nuts. On the other hand, the Wahabi version also requires medieval dress, men must wear a fist length beard, covering women, ectera. The counterpart are in Christianity; the Amish, in Judaism; the Hassidic Jews. But the Amish sure understand that their beliefs are optional. The Wahabi get more influence than they should because of two things:

1. They control the environs of Mecca.
2. They get lots of money from the oil revenues of the House of Saud.

We have the ability to marginalize the nutty ones by reducing our buy of oil (burn coal, work on Nuclear Energy, use domestic oil, use non-arabic oil sources.)

Marginal decreases in funding will have great influence in the amount of money the House of Saud will have to flow to the Wahabi. If there is a republican government in Arabia, they should have to get their funds from the Arab street, rather than from the concentrated wealth of a family which is buying internal peace by providing large donations to nut cases.

And my apologies to any nutcases that I have offended. In the US most Arabs are Christians, and most Muslims are black.

There are lots of books out there that report every conceivable view point on Islam, however the truth is the truth. If you want to know what that religion teaches, just pick up a copy of the koran at your local book store, and then read it

Tom, you are correct in this. Frankly, I would not trust any book purporting to present Islam published in the past decade or so; there are far too many agendas out there, far too many smokescreens. And I have seen this firsthand, including a fellow I know who is the head of the local CAIR chapter; he talks nice, but somehow quite fails to persuade. (Microsoft has many Muslims/Arabs in its employ so we have quite a few in the area.)

However, as I pointed out, I was not reading a book on Islam, but on the Arab's way of thinking, his perception of the world, his expectations, reactions behaviors, etc. The book establishes these roots in the pre-Islamic era and brings them forward. One of the major points that comes across is how neatly Islam fits into the Arab's inherent patterns of thought formed in centuries of stark Bedouin existence, from his monochromatic (black & white) way of thought to the necessity of submitting to the tribe to the disparagement of physical labor to the almost continual presentation of obvious lies. The book goes on to show the varied cultural adaptations to a "settled" existence, from the lowest laboring classes (the fellahin) to the elites who in some cases (particularly North Africa) found themselves culturally and even linguistically (at the time of writing) cut off from their Arab roots.

Perhaps this close fit between Arabism and Islam shouldn't be a surprise, given the origin of Islam. It is odd, though (as reported -- I've only begun to read a translation of the Koran; 35 years old, so less likely to be subjected to modern PC) that Mohammed started out with semi-peaceful preaching he got more strident as time went on.

The picture this book paints is unsettling. It explains the baffling intransigence of the Palestinians, for example, continuing to suffer and fight when they could have so easily had what they claim they want. We are in for a long, long battle.

Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems to me that you have a bigger problem with Christians than with Moslems

Tom, I think you are wrong. I have no problem with Christianity. Our past is not perfect, though as another poster on this thread pointed out, what was done was not Biblical.

I don't even have a problem with fundamental Christianity, except where it becomes a means of control and isolation. (Memories of the girlfriend who refused ever to set foot in my church, and members of the evangelical youth group of another who quite visibly recoiled when they learned I was *gasp* Anglican. And no, I do not think that isolation and control are endemic in the fundamentalist churches, nor are they the sole province of same.)

More than that, I don't even have a problem with the Rev. Pat Robertson. (I supported him in '88.)