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ADL Condemns Remarks by Geert Wilders

225
haakondahl4/30/2009 3:27:14 pm PDT

re: #29 zombie

Islam is not merely a religion. It is also a way of life, a philosophy, a military doctrine, a political structure, a legal system, and so on. It is all-encompassing and goes beyond mere “religion.” In fact, as Edward Said might have said, it is “orientalist” of us to apply our western notion of “religion” being a separate category from secular life, and applying that definition to Islam.

Disappointing. You are using the same brush with which Americans are tarred by Europeans as Puritanical, and by the Middle-East as Crusaders.
There are “a way of life, a philosophy, a military doctrine, a political structure, a legal system, and so on” available which conform closely to Islam, but these are not the religion itself.
I am in Afghanistan, and I have friends here who are devout Muslims, but who would *of course* not dream of subscribing to the nightmare vision espoused by some.

Are you now so educated that you can no longer see beyond what learned people say? How can you take a basic fact of human nature, that people are infinitely varied in their approaches to life, and allow that to be eclipsed by the shadow of political correctness? You sound like the people who said that Iraq was doomed to failure because “those people” had no tradition of freedom, no desire for freedom, and most offensively, no *ability* to deal with freedom. They thought they were being sensitive—they were being racist or something close to it.

You have a few valid data points—but putting it in a syllogism will show you your (surprising) error.