you have to keep in mind not all Muslims are that whacked. The clitorectomy monsters are a tiny tribal minority and looked at aghast by most other Muslims. And a lot of the other activities, like stoning adulterers and mutilating criminals surgically, are not widespread. Of course, their enemies love to publicize and exaggerate these aberrations, and they are indeed increasing somewhat as the Muslim world has radicalized over the last few decades.
Just as in the Christian religion, there are several divisions of Islam, and many minor subdivisions and sects, not to mention innumerable local customs that are primarily cultural and ethnic, not religious. For example, nowhere in the Koran are women instructed to wear burkhas, or even to go about veiled. Men and women are BOTH merely admonished to "dress modestly". And veils were not unknown in Europe either, respectable married women in Classical Athens were expected to not leave home without them.
It is also important to recall that many major Muslim governments were secularly based, as in Turkey and in pre-Invasion Iraq. So was Afghanistan before the Soviet withdrawal. Saddam encouraged Iraqi women to be educated, join the professions, and to adopt western styles, and it is only the Americans who have looked the other way and allowed some of the more "fundamentalist" attitudes to creep in in order to suck up to their pals in government.
The truth, as always, is somewhere in between, and it should never be forgotten, even if one is forced by circumstances to pick sides.
Flame » in reply to Good post, ER
To be fair,
The whole thread (43 posts)
- FLAME, meet Flame...
- "This land is mine"
- The solution remains....
- Truman's Folly and Ancient Kool Aid Drinkers
- What about the site itself?
- Jerusalem belonged to the Jews long before there were Christians.
- All essentially true