"Mr. Dreher would do well to apply the standards he uses to judge Islam to Christianity and see whether he still smells the incense of truth or if the pungency of his own rhetoric becomes more discernible. Violent history? Hipocritical practitioners? Extremist movements? Military applications? Sex descrimination? Persecution of the heathen? Christianity has done all this, but has had the great good fortune to be defanged by a secular society, so some distance can be put between politics and theology. Islam is still grappling with this problem.

Are some Islamic charities fronts for financing terrorists? Sure. Are they all? I suggest to everyone that there have been Catholic churches in this country of a certain ethnic persuasion that have fronted money to the IRA. Does this make Catholic Charities and the Catholic Youth Organization terrorist fronts? Hardly. Does this make all the Irish terrorists? "
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We've addressed the Christian wackos point in other posts. Were the West and US not secular and say, the Catholic Church the powerful persecutor of the Middle Ages you'd have a valid analogy. That Church, with those beliefs, power and actions would be an enemy of today's Western democracies. I'll leave aside the political influence and quirks of today's Church for other days' topics.

Christian Tim McVey was denounced repeatedly by the vast majority of Christian church leaders. The few fringe church groups supporting him were denounced. I'm still looking for the actions and the touted beliefs of the September 11th murderers to be denounced loudly, incessantly and vigorously by Muslim clerics in the USA and elsewhere. So far, their words have been quite ambiguous and vague. My question is this...are Oprah and others presenting the peaceful true view of the world's billion+ Muslims or is there a undercurrent of strong anti-Infidel belief that is not presented? Is it acceptable to die killing infidels and thereby enter heaven with 72 +/- virgins? Or is that an egregious distortion of the Koran, way out of context and is it to be soundly, incessantly and emphatically denounced by the vast majority of Muslim clerics? Which is it?

-philw (waiting for Muslim clerics en masse to refute such concerns)