Do you not think it wrong to brand a whole religion with the brush of tyrants? It is also not helpful. Religions of all ilk have spread transgressions to many throughout time.

I submit the current problem is not the religion, but the hijacking of a religion by tyrants. More specifically the tyrants that sit on the oil wealth of countries and direct the hatred of the uneducated masses through Islam at convenient targets, ie Jews and Americans. This transference of hatred is common in human history, and generally is used to serve evil intent.

By and large the center of gravity in this episode is greed and power, the greed of Middle East tyrants. The picture of the Saudis sitting amongst all their golden splendor parceling out their brand of hate through their mouth piece puppets in the mosque is a grotesque sight. This is a state religion at it's worst.

Islam is sick in it's current manifestation, but the disease is greed and power. Do a little research, go back in time before the oil started to flow, you will see Islamic cultures that were for the most part peaceful and tolerant.

Somewhat OT, Drudge has an amazing exchange between Scott McClellan and a bunch of reporters ripping him a new one for having the temerity to suggest that Newsweek ought to check its facts before it torpedoes US policy and gets people killed. Some of these journalists are drifting into a fairly overt Fifth Column position.

If someone desicrated the Bible would you be more or less likely to give information to them? It would piss me off and stiffen my resolve to give them nothing, or at most lies. Didn't anyone at NEWSWEEK notice this?

We should've given them a shampoo: stick head in dirty toilet repeatedly until singing breaks out.

bill

Do a little research, go back in time before the oil started to flow, you will see Islamic cultures that were for the most part peaceful and tolerant.

Yeah, after they conquered all of the countries of the middle east and Spain by the sword, were stopped the French and rolled back to the middle east, they only fought amongst themselves, tribe against tribe. The only reason Islam may not appear to be as violent as it is today is because the west didn't care what was happening there as the Islamic tribes didn't have the weapons to threaten the west and fought only each other.

One of the things that really jolts my, and many on the left, paranoia bone is the constant referral to the Gitmo internees as if they were known terrorists/mass murderers/monsters etc. How do we know this? They have been given no due process. The government has made no case against them other than that it came to possess them in the context of the fighting. Some we continue to hold; others we held for years and then suddenly released. We on the left look at this and wonder why the government can't come up with a due process to determine who is a terrorist and who is someone caught up in the fighting. We wonder what letting the administration get away with this will mean down the road.

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you. Or perhaps, the price of freedom is paranoia.

Bill,
I'm sorry but you're incorrect. Muslim states were niether peaceful nor tolerant to non-muslims.
They have been in a constant state of war with the non-muslim world since its inception by Mohammed in the seventh century.
Islam has been spread by the sword, since the prophet took up arms against his enemies.
If we go back just over a hundred years, we have the Turks slaughtering the Christian Armenians in a genocide that would be the model for Hitler's own.
Jews and Christians were not allowed to practice their faith, repair their churches, or even have any form of civil rights. They could not vote, and their testimony in court was deemed worthless.
Here is what peaceful and tolerant Islam did in India around 1000 AD .
And before you come back with the lame rejoinder about the evil Christian Crusades, just remember the Crusades were launched after Muslims seized the Holy Land, and refused to allow Christian pilgrims access to their Holy sites as they were promised they could.

Islam is the same religion today that it was in the seventh century. There has been no interpretation, reformation, or evolution of thought in Islam as there has in the Christian world. There is no interpretation as in the Jewish world. The terrorists and rioters are not fundamentalist extremists, they are orthodox!

Islam is an oppresive religion. After they drove the non-muslim elements out of thier lands, there has been no culturally or scientificly revolutionary ideas to come out of Muslim lands. When you remove oil revnues, the Scandanavian countries have a greater GDP than all of the muslim world with a fraction of the population.
In the cradle of civilization, Iraq, there is more poverty and illiteracy than there is in the poorest American town. There has been civilization there for 6000 years but what do they have to show for it now?
And why do all these totalitarian states rise up in Muslim lands? Non-muslim states have been totaletarian, but why all Muslim states? Why up until the 20th century has there been no muslim democracy? Where are the great Islamic poets, scientists, docotors, philosophers?
Why is it OK to slaughter people for flushing a book? Where is the value for human life?
Islam itself is the problem because it facilitates these abuses with its absolutist and in a way nihilistic philosophy.

Yeah Islam was peaceful, as long as they had subjugated the local Christians and made slaves of them and killed the rest, took everything they had, desicrated and destroyed their holy places, ruled over them in a brutal and tyrannical manner designed to make them continually feel psychologically beaten and an inferior race compared to their conquerors, made them pay a tax to be Christians or face death, yes Islam was peaceful as long as they had all the money, palaces, brothels, slaves and lands they wanted, yes Islam was peaceful as long as their lust for war, booty, rape, lust, greed and murder was saited, the Religion of Peace was peaceful.

Everything everyone's said above. Akbar the Great sponsored theological debates between Jews, Christians, Buddhists and Moslems, yes, but that was at a time when every one of those people but Moslems was living in a dhimmi state, paying extra taxes for the privilege of life, possessing sharply restricted rights, religious and otherwise, having practically zero legal recourse against crimes committed by Moslems, etc.

Let's not spread this "perversion of a great religion of peace" meme. It's historically ignorant and patently offensive. Objectively speaking, Islam does give its followers a license for genocide, domination, and conquest: more, it requires and demands these things as a duty to their god.

To think I just hit the tip jar at Little Green Footballs. Had I only known about this thread, good ole Broke Ace could have been the lucky guy.

Hey ace, thanks for the link.
David

von Kreedon: As you say, the government "came to possess them in the context of the fighting." Under the laws of war, the default position is to keep them until the war is over, no question about due process or any other aspects of criminal law. There is a difference between the procedural rights granted to Americans under the Constitution and those captured on the battlefield. Since these people were captured while not wearing uniforms or otherwise behaving as legitimate soldiers they have NO rights as prisoners of war. The military has every right to set up those military tribunals mentioned at the end of 2001, and start passing sentence on the worst of them. But the ones who didn't commit atrocities and were merely captured while fighting - they get to stay imprisoned until we decide the war's over. Even if they met all the standards of legitimate POWs, they'd still be liable to be imprisoned until the war was over. If the military wants to grant them parole, that's a legitimate decision - but it's not as if the prisoners have any right to release.