Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site mit-athena.ARPA Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!mit-athena!martillo From: martillo@mit-athena.ARPA (Joaquim Martillo) Newsgroups: net.politics Subject: Re: Re: Re: 3rd world savages Message-ID: <52@mit-athena.ARPA> Date: Sat, 15-Dec-84 00:00:00 EST Article-I.D.: mit-athe.52 Posted: Sat Dec 15 00:00:00 1984 Date-Received: Sat, 15-Dec-84 20:25:17 EST References: <566@asgb.UUCP>, <234@rlgvax.UUCP> <12@mit-athena.ARPA> <240@rlgvax.UUCP> <2231@mit-hermes.ARPA> <50Re: Re: Re: 3rd world savages Organization: MIT, Project Athena, Cambridge, Ma. Lines: 46 >> If Wayne read the articles, I said Islam would have to undergo a major >> reform or the religion would have to be stamped out (not Muslim >> peoples). >> >> Having requirements to conquer your non-Muslim neighbors (if you can >> win) and then to degrade and humiliate non-Muslim subjects definitely >> makes Islam religio non grata. >> >> One could argue that Christianity had to wait until the eighteenth >> century to overcome many similar prejudices. But even though Islam >> became a state religion several centuries later than Christianity, the >> sort of ethical development I would like to see is a fairly obvious >> reform even for a young religion. >> >> By the way, my mother's family a few decades ago were troglodytes living >> in Southern Libya. None of us engage in or would try to apologize for >> or rationalize the type of disgusting barbarism which takes place in >> large parts of the third-world. >You've been making a lot of statements to the effect that "Islam should >be wiped out", but here you say that this means the religon, not the >people. How do you propose to do it? The only way you will ever be able >to bring this about is by eliminating the practicers of Islam. (At least >within any reasonable time.) The Moslems who you are criticizing are >certainly a minority -- there are lots of perfectly peaceful and reasonable >people of every religon. Any way you look at it, what you are calling for >is genocide. Because of historical and current Muslim mistreat of nonMuslims, after Khomeini's seizure of power, after the assassination of Sadat and because of numerous other incidents in Muslim nations, I am not so sure of the minority status of the crazies although I will concede Wayne's opinion was the common wisdom as little as ten years ago. I know there are many peaceful and reasonable Muslims. My father does a lot of business in Muslim countries and we have many Muslim family friends. I simply suspect that peaceful and reasonable Muslims are peaceful and reasonable despite Islam. A popular turn of the century Ottoman opinion blamed Islam for almost everything that was wrong with the Ottoman Empire and with the Islamic world in general. Careful reading of Al-Afghani and `Abdu suggest that neither would have been particulary opposed to a thorough-going reform of Islam as I have suggested. In the 19th century noone was willing to pander the crazies the way people do nowadays.