Islam and all that

[good2skull]

Something to ponder over; Islam, Islamic countries, Arabic countriss and the like have been in the news a lot recently whether its September 11th, the Burqua (spelling?), oppression of women, suicide bombers or being treated badly by Israel and the USA etc. I hear quite a lot of comments like "how can someone in 2002 want be so fanatical about something, the rules regarding female dress, the jihad, suicide bombers, Islam must be a barbaric religion !!!" To an observer in western europe, on the face of it perhaps but as I understand Islam, in terms of age as a religion is about at the point where Catholicism was in the 1500's when they were implementing the inquisition and burning "heretics" all over the place, and destroying the native South American cultures in the name of evangelism. So comparing this with Islam today, is Islam really just going through the normal process of a developing religion ? If so, what do the next 200 years hold for the sons of the Prophet ? And the rest of us....?

[incitatus]

This is one of those arguable points. Religions on the whole tend to be more aggressive the youngr they are, in much the same way that nation states do. In ppoint of fact Islam is not any more barbaric a religion than many others. It has injunctions to peace and harmony in the same way that others do. The point with the rules for female dress is that they are cultural rather than religious. The code in the qu'ran is much less strivct than that actually practised in many moslem states. One of the problems is one of evolution. Womens rights havent really evolved in the moslem world in the same way they have in the west. But remember that women do have rights enshrined in sharia law which the church in europe never granted them. Even 500 years ago the islamic world regarded US as barbaric in our treatment of women. But then they stayed still and we changed. All of this is rather simplistic of course, human affairs are very complex. The one thing you can say for certain is that fanaticism is bred out of poverty and injustice, so that once again we have bred our own demons.