According to John F. Burns in today’s New York Times, a group of Islamic schools and clubs in the UK are purveying not only vile anti-Semitic views, but recommending horrible punishments based on sharia law. This information came from a half-hour BBC video (see below).
Burns reports:
A British network of more than 40 part-time Islamic schools and clubs with 5,000 students has been teaching from a Saudi Arabian government curriculum that contains anti-Semitic and homophobic views, including a textbook that asks children to list the “reprehensible” qualities of Jews, according to a BBC documentary broadcast on Monday.
The 30-minute “Panorama” program quoted the Saudi government-supplied textbook as saying that Jews “looked like monkeys and pigs,” and that Zionists set out to achieve “world domination.” The program quoted a separate part of the curriculum — for children as young as 6 — saying that someone who is not a believer in Islam at death would be condemned to “hellfire.” . . .
One of the textbooks, according to the BBC program, prescribed execution as the penalty for gay sex, and outlined differing viewpoints as to whether death should be by stoning, immolation by fire or throwing offenders off a cliff. Another set out the punishments prescribed by Shariah law for theft, including amputation of hands and feet. A BBC video accompanying an article on the program’s Web site showed a textbook illustration of a hand and a foot marked to show where amputations should be made.
Note that these schools and clubs are under the direction of the cultural ministry of the Saudi embassy in the UK, and so are the responsibility of the Saudi government. The anti-Semitic characterization of Jews as swine and apes comes, of course, straight from the Qur’an, while the homophobia and punishments come from both the Qur’an and the hadith.
Remember, this is not the Middle East, but the United Kingdom. Those who so fervently assert that Islam is a “religion of peace,” and who claim that such vile hatred is not part of “mainstream Islam,” might pay some attention. Before asserting that these views are purely extremist and not “normal” Islamic belief, let’s have some data, not just assertions based on wishful thinking. How many Islamic anti-Semites and homophobes will it take before we retract the ridiculous characterization of Islam as a “religion of peace”? 10%? 30%?
I’d be delighted if the Muslim community of Britain, and all of its imams, would immediately denounce this practice. I’m not holding my breath; judicious silence is what you see in these situations.
Isn’t it ironic that the religious commentators on yesterday’s Guardian/Observer discussion so quickly denounced Richard Dawkins as “militant” for simply expressing his atheism, while not mentioning the many Muslims who want Jews and gays tortured and killed? Do these people know what “militant” means?
Here is the entire BBC program from YouTube.
Part 1:
Part 2:
h/t: John Brockman
As a general rubric, never trust any faction that does not appreciate Woody Allen’s discography.
J’accuse!
Tony Bleurrgh allowed the rise of ‘Faith schools’ –
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/sep/02/education.labour
& also this –
http://www.angelfire.com/nb/lt/docs/called42.htm
This makes me very angry.
And still he’s at it
“Blair says religion has a place in politics”
http://www.montrealgazette.com/business/Blair+says+religion+place+politics/3823402/story.html
Blair is flogging his “Tony Blair Faith Foundation” – I’m quite sure this is a big reason why Hitchens is keen to debate him.
Thanks for the link. So much for not ‘doing god’.
And the British taxpayers are *still* paying for religious schools. Tony Blah, Gordon Brownnose – they’re all in favor of taxpayers paying for religious schools.
One point that came up in the Guardian debate is the concept of ‘militant’ – Dawkins is considered a militant for being outspoken, even though he never advocates the violence and hatred so openly espoused by ‘moderate’ religious types. It shows a slight lack of balance (to say the least) to set the bar so low and consider a person who explains why he’s an atheist ‘militant’ when you can get away with the most appalling bigotry in the name of religion.
100% agreed.
You’re forgetting that you’re meant to be apologetic and supine if you’re an atheist. Anything more than that might just make people uncomfortable, which we couldn’t possibly tolerate in this society of “tolerance”.
What about the “Ecclesia militans”, the Church Militant? Why are they not included as stident & outspoken?
Main reason this makes me uncomfortable is that my fellow liberals are the ones I disagree with the most concerning Islam, even though regarding eseentially every other issue under the sun I consider myself a liberal.
And the one thing I can’t stand is people not having sat for an exam on the Koran even once in their lifetime claiming to understand it better than I do.
PS Islam doesn’t mean peace, it means submission. But I guess everyone here would know it.
It is funny that I keep hearing this. I live in Massachusetts and know thousands of liberals but not one who supports Islam or calls it a religion of peace. Who are these alleged people?
Ditto here.
They’re out there. In Minneapolis, where I live, you can hardly shake a stick w/o hitting one. They seem utterly determined to ignore the fact that Islam is such fertile soil for cultivating violence. In a tortuous bit of logic, they reason that ignoring or rationalizing the misdeeds of Muslims makes them better people; they’ve taken the high road. I think just the opposite – hold people and/or ideologies responsible! There’s nothing wrong w righteous indignation if it’s called for.
Arguably they’re not really liberals according the the best definition (the most cogent one) – they don’t believe in universal human rights.
But they tend not to realize that their defensiveness about Islam means not believing in universal human rights, so they don’t really realize they’re not liberals.
Incisive as ever Ophelia. It is anti-liberal and condescending to say that some folks deserve freedom and others don’t, because it might upset someones sensibilities.
The make a lot of blog posts and articles that get space in major magazines and newspapers. On Faith at the Washington Post is just full of them.
I suspect they are encouraged by the media mostly because they assume that Islam can’t be that bad, and that the people causing all the problems are just the ones that really radical. This ignores all the really terrible, systemic problems with Islam both in its holy book and its practice.
There is definitely an alliance between certain sections of the British left and Islasmism. Some people are unscrupulous in who they team up with in their case against the “neo-colonialist west”.
Bob: try Keith Olbermann or dailykos.com.
I have to say that the only two non-Muslims (never mind liberals) I can think of who’ve ever touted the “Islam is a religion of peace” schtick, are Tony Blair and George Bush.
They only ever claimed it was the case in order to deny accusations of bigotry, from people who found it suspicious that they were so keen on immolating Muslims.
(Okay, maybe George Galloway as well, but again, not a liberal.)
A look at an Islamic school in Des Moines, Iowa, just published a few days ago
“Christian teachers at Des Moines Muslim school gain insight into religion, themselves”
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20101121/NEWS/11210333/-1/GETPUBLISHED03wp-rss2.php/Christian-teachers-at-Des-Moines-Muslim-school-gain-insight-into-religion-themselves-
Saw this at the end of that article. I’d say both of these responses are equally likely to be true:
Asks Amina Mackic, 5, whose parents are from Bosnia: “Do you know who made spiders?”
Jawad Ali, 5, whose parents are from Pakistan, replies, “Allah! Allah made the spiders.”
Moltazam Aldow, 5, whose parents are from Sudan, chimes in, “No! Spider-Man made the spiders.”
I think there is more evidence for answer #2.
Don’t tell them about the Spiderman cartoons that have been published. It’ll only be a matter of time before they are attacking the Spider Embassy.
But remember, Saudi Arabia is our ally in the war on terror.
Well, the royal family and the government – however, they do not control the individual religious schools and they are always apprehensive about confronting the schools. It’s a similar story in Pakistan – but at least Saudi Arabia has a more stable government.
These Saudi schools that exist in Britain are affiliated with the cultural section of the Saudi embassy here.
> they do not control the individual religious schools and they are always apprehensive about confronting the schools.
Exactly my point. They not only don’t confront them, they assist them.
including a textbook that asks children to list the “reprehensible” qualities of Jews
Taught well, this is an excellent question. Unfortunately, it’s unlikely that it would be taught that way.
Correct answer: Same as everyone else’s.
While in Australia I’ve met a number of homosexuals from Saudi Arabia and Iran; all you have to do is ask them how homosexuals are treated in those countries and you’d think someone had pointed a gun to their head. Even though they’re on the other side of the planet it still scares ’em.
I noticed that the online fatwas are signed off with “And Allah Knows Best”. Oy, vat chutzpah! More of the usual religious bullshit: We know what god thinks, and you don’t.
Best was the better footballer, though.
Yeah – that makes me want to join a seminary, put on that priest dress, and play football just to see what it’s like. I might have to wear a bike helmet too to restrict my vision.
Well, at least they show all sides of the controversy…
+1
Very troubling. But it was very troubling the last time that it was addressed, and it will just as troubling the next time it comes to us as though something new and worrying was being revealed.
Isn’t it obvious, watching the girls shrouded in black with a little slit for their eyes, that Islam is not compatible with democratic forms of governance? Islam is an unreformed and perhaps unreformable religion.
One imam says that Qu’ranic verses were being considered out of context, as though, in context, they are tolerable. But they’re not. Take some of the verses about the Jews, for example. This is straight intolerance now. It was simple intolerance when they were written. And yet, in both cases, they must be, according to the Qu’ran, the precise words of God.
Islam is not only not a religion of peace; it is, in fact, one of the most violent and intolerant religions in existence. That’s not to say that Christianity is not intolerant. In its most conservative forms it certainly is. But Christianity has gone through the enlightenment, and at least tries to tone down its most intolerant aspects. Where it is on the front foot, however, as AC Grayling says, it is still intolerant and dictatorial.
Can Islam go through an enlightenment? Only if it can read the Qu’ran and the hadith as historical texts, subject to the same kind of qualifications that the Bible was increasingly subjected to after Spinoza. Christians still resist this, but the Bible nowhere claims to be the word of God. The Qu’ran does. It is, simply, a recitation of the words of a god. Can this be relativised? I doubt it, and until we’re sure, democracies are storing up future problems by allowing Islam to remain, unreformed, in their midst.
Turkey remains a democratic and secular state even though the dominant religion is islam. In the USA various jesus cults form the dominant religion(s), but fortunately we remain secular and democratic despite attempts to turn us into a “christian nation”. The democratic system currently sucks in the way it is implemented – basically gamed over the past 50 years and now subservient to the interests of politicians and lobby groups.
I don’t know that I consider any state that punishes blasphemy or equivalents “secular”
Calling Turkey either democratic or secular is a stretch. And the Turks who want to make it more democratic are mostly the ones who want to make it less secular.
Turkey is striving, with some difficulty, to remain a secular state. Whether it will survive the onslaught of a renewed commitment to Islam by many of its citizens is an open question, I think. It certainly seems to be true that the compatibility of Islam and democracy is not demonstrated by the example of Turkey, since it has only been maintained by the support of the military, deeply influenced as it was by German leadership during the First World War.
As for truthseeker’s claim that those who want to make Turkey “more” democratic are those who want to make it less secular, I think this is a misunderstanding. Liberal democracy is secular. Religions, while retaining considerable power and influence, could easily wreck the liberal settlement, but this would not make the societies more democratic, but less so, since democracy is not measured simply by counting votes, but at least as much by the protection of minorities. It is a serious error to think that democracy is just about winning majorities. That’s what constitutions like the American constitution are doing: limiting the damage that majorities can do. Without this we do not have democracy, but majoritarian dictatorships. (As the Greeks knew, democracy (understood simply as majority rule) and tyranny are just a few years apart.) There’s a difference. Were the Islamists successful in getting Turkey to roll back the secular reforms of Ataturk, this would destroy Turkish democracy.
“It is a serious error to think that democracy is just about winning majorities.”
Exactly, Eric. It’s a point that can’t be made too often since so many people reflexively make that error.
The problem with our perception of Islam also stems from how easy it is to get called a “moderate” Muslim. While a lot certainly do exist, often those groups and individuals touted as moderate in the media would privately be very happy to call Jews “apes and pigs” and to see fatwas issues against apostates and homosexuals. The problem is a large minority of Muslims immigrants in Europe hold values that are simply not compatible with classical liberal society, and it is only a matter of percentages before this starts to cause severe problems.
…saying that Jews “looked like monkeys and pigs…”
The correct response to this being, so what if they did?
I think Jews rather do look like monkeys. As do British people, Chinese, Inuit, French, Papua New Guinean, and all the other members of homo sapiens. Yeah, I know we are apes, not monkeys… but we look a hell of a lot more like monkeys than, say, alligators.
Which is why I’ve always been baffled by the Creationist “I ain’t no monkey!” argument. Um… have you looked at primates? And have you looked at humans? You really don’t notice any similarities? That’s interesting…
I think they do notice the similarity, and it disturbs them, because it threatens the very foundation of the idea that humans are special and unique and have an unlimited right to exploit other species. So they go into hyper-denial mode to avoid their serenity being disturbed by such inconvenient thoughts.
Surely that is the case. But it’s still weird.
And how is this so different from radical evangelistic “christianity” or some of the views of any radical “religion” about non-believers ?
This is mainstream Islam, not a fringe offshoot.
Well, it’s probably about as mainstream as evangelical Christianity. Which is to say, probably most Muslims/Christians living in a modern country don’t think that way, but a disturbingly large number do, and worse yet they are rather unapologetic about it.
I’m sorry, but from what I saw in the broadcast is that these books are used by a minority of Islamic schools. This minority, along with some xian schools started the new inspection organization.
Did I miss something?
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think any religious organization should be providing education of any kind.
The fact that it’s no different from any other radical religion doesn’t make it any less reprehensible.
Which evangelical Christian organizations teach their children the proper way to maim and kill heretics? I don’t think even Fred Phelps goes that far.
@~11.45 in the second video – looks sorta like a stylized swastika on that book.
No, that’s a classical Islamic eight pointed star expressed using a woven pattern with two different colors.
Even an actual swastika does not necessarily constitute an endorsement of Naziism. Swastikas have been used by Hindus and Buddhists for millennia, and still are today (although the color scheme and design are not identical to the standard Nazi symbol).
What is to be done about situations where a religion becomes a really toxic entity? These Saudi controlled schools are fulling hate and bronze age values, but is that just cause to shutter them, or cut them off from their Saudi monies? I have a real problem with religious instruction in schools, because the children are very seldom given a choice, and they don’t have any comparable course work in real school (if its an afterschool program) to contrast it with.
In the US, it seems like the religions gradually become less crazy over time, but what can we be done to deal with full on crazy cults and dangerous branches of mainstream religions?
In the US, it seems like the religions gradually become less crazy over time
[Citation needed]
Compare Founding Fathers view on religions to the current reps.
Yeah, it was really more the other way around.
In Europe most Christian denominations seemed to get less crazy, after they spent a few centuries trying to kill each other.
The “Founding Fathers” found religious justification for owning human beings. The current reps do not.
And they also erected the wall of church and state while many were religious.
Now, notsomuch.
“I’d be delighted if the Muslim community of Britain, and all of its imams, would immediately denounce this practice. I’m not holding my breath; judicious silence is what you see in these situations.”
It is somewhat heartening, though, that the article finishes with this sentence:
“In a written response to the findings, the Saudi ambassador to the UK said the teachings were not endorsed by the Saudi embassy.”
Bigotry may be systemic within Islam, but at least the politicians are savvy enough to distance themselves.
Growing up I always viewed religion as a “culture-thing”, people really didn’t believe in God, no more than they did Santa. If people asked me my religion I would say I’m a Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Animist. This is to say I just don’t get the hate and vitriol that some people espouse in the name of their “culture”.
At work a Jewish colleague shares a ham and pineapple pizza with an Islamic colleague — each picking off the ham pieces. I’ve three friends all religious, two men both gay, a devout Catholic, and the other follows Jewish dietary laws, the third an openly lesbian Moslem. A Persian friend who always serves wine at dinner (even though I don’t drink). I know Moslems that own dogs, Jews that eat bacon, and Catholics who use condoms… and no one cares.
My friends are my friends, not my gay friend, or my Catholic friend, or my Goth friend, they’re just “my friends.”
I just don’t get it, but then I grew up in multicultural pluralistic environment — as the video points out segregation is not a good a thing.
NYT: Saudi officials quoted by the BBC disavowed direct responsibility for the schools and clubs and described the teachings cited in the program as having been “taken out of their historical context.”
The underlying context is opposition to Israel, but the original historical context is Sura 5:59&endash;60 in which God turns some Jews (and Christians) into monkeys and pigs. You can even let Google translate God’s original if you like:
JC: How many Islamic anti-Semites and homophobes will it take before we retract the ridiculous characterization of Islam as a “religion of peace”? 10%? 30%?
When it comes to negative attitudes toward Jews from Muslims, the numbers are much worse than that according to the Pew Global Attitudes Project: “anti-Jewish sentiments are almost universal in the three Arab nations surveyed–95% or more in Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt say they have an unfavorable opinion of Jews.” In Europe, the number of French Muslims who do not view Jews favorably is 29%, compared to 46% of the Spanish and 36% of Russians who rate Jews unfavorably.
All this—including the ugly school book propaganda from the Saudis—has infinitely more to do with opposition to the creation and the policies of the Jewish State of Israel than it does with Islam itself, as blameworthy as Islam is. This is a tribal dispute over Israel/Palestine, not an actual religious dispute, and these numbers won’t budge even if all the Muslims renounce the Prophet or the Jews renounce their divine covenant.
Its a tribal dispute that makes Muslims thousands of miles away, who don’t give a rats ass about Palestinians, hate Jews? I don’t buy it, i’m sure some of it is based on actual wrongs done by Israel but its not a large part.
Which homosexual tribe is persecuting Muslims to account for the hatred of them?
Muslims thousands of miles away, who don’t give a rats ass about Palestinians … I don’t buy it
This is willful ignorance of the world as it actually is. Saudi Arabia (which is hundreds, not thousands of miles from Israel) has important alliances with countries whose people do care about the Palestinians, whether or not the Saudis do themselves; but the Saudis must care because they are all Arabs and because of Saudi national interests in a stable ME.
Believe it or not, the great majority attacks on the “Jews” in the Islamic world are mostly a dog whistle for attacks on Israel. Islam comes along for the ride because it enables attacks like this.
The Islamic treatment homosexuals is irrelevant to my point, but come to think of it, homosexuality is ironically central to the point about Middle East history. T. E. Lawrence’s romantic love of the Arabs derived from the romantic love of a specific Arab boy, Selim Ahmed. Lawrence opens The Seven Pillars of Wisdom with a homoerotic dedication of love to “S.A.”,
The Arabs achieved their independence with the help of a man who lay with an Arab boy “quivering together in the yielding sand, with intimate hot limbs in supreme embrace” (The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Chapter 1).
Yes I am aware that many Muslim men sleep with young boys many have even come to find women repulsive because they never see them. Call them homosexual and they will probably try to kill you though. Not sure what this has to do with the fact that the only argument about homosexuals in these countries is not whether to kill them or not its whether it should be by fire or stone.
Not that it’s particularly relkevant, but Saudi Arabia is about 12 miles from Eilat (Israel) on its north western border.
“Its a tribal dispute that makes Muslims thousands of miles away, who don’t give a rats ass about Palestinians, hate Jews”
Yes. And they do give a rat’s ass about Palestinians, or more accurately the Palestinian cause, just as many Americans of Irish descent give a rat’s ass about the Irish Republican cause and keep funding the Real IRA even though most Catholics in Northern Ireland probably don’t want them to.
Of course religious conflict is welded inextricably to the tribal conflict by centuries of history. There’s a lot of overlap between tribal identity and religious identity.
Ask a young Muslim American about why they hate Jews. Say one thats 18 or so you may find a small % who actually know whats going on over there hell most will even say something about Palestine. Ask a little deeper and you’ll find they don’t know shit about the subject. They will quickly fall into conspiracy theories about Jews blowing up the world trade center and how allah says they are pigs.
This “it is tribal, not religious” argument presupposes that the tribal isn’t intimately connected with the religious. I think you’ll find that in actual reality, where people live and die, tribal maps to religion with extremely high affinity. My guess is that, absent religious differences, there wouldn’t be nearly the same animosity. In fact, I suspect that there would be a more pan-Semitic identity if there weren’t religion getting between Arabs and Jews.
I suspect that there would be a more pan-Semitic identity if there weren’t religion getting between Arabs and Jews.
I suggest studying the atrocity-producing divisions within the Phalangist faction alone during the Lebanese Civil War. That should cure anyone of the idea that tribal conflicts can be overcome by coreligionists.
There is no doubt that divisions exist outside of religion. Are you suggesting that such an observation is incompatible with my suggestion?
Are you suggesting that such an observation is incompatible with my suggestion?
Yes, and particularly in this instance. Traditionally, Islam has treated the Jews relatively well, and because of, not in spite of, religious differences. Though the Qur’an places Jews in a distinctly inferior position, it is a position of recognized toleration, a position that has been more-or-less honored in Muslim countries from the early Muslim conquests up until Sykes-Picot and its aftermath. Contrast this history to the Christian west and the New Testament, where Jesus and Jews themselves condemn their bloodline as unbelievers and Christ killers. When the “Catholic Monarchs” Isabella and Ferdinand of Spain purged the peninsula of Jews, the Ottoman sultan welcomed them with a formal invitation and supposedly declared: “Ye call Ferdinand a wise king he who makes his land poor and ours rich!” Indeed, the greatest of Jewish philosophers thrived in Córdoba.
The rise of Muslim “anti-Semitism” is tied directly to the rise of Israel, and really has nothing at all to do with Islam. Muslims imported all the crazy Protocols and blood libel stuff from the Christian west; it did not develop organically from Islam as it did in Christianity, in spite of the Qur’anic passages about monkeys and pigs.
The reality is that the Middle East Conflict is at heart a tribal conflict, not a religious one, and it would in fact be a dream for the world to go back to Muslim-Jewish relations as they were practice prior to WWI, as dictated even in the Qur’an. But that’s not going to happen.
“The reality is that the Middle East Conflict is at heart a tribal conflict, not a religious one”
I agree with the facts you present, just not the conclusions you make. Religion unquestionably serves as yet another key for in-group/out-group identification. That isn’t arguable. It is true. So do tribal/racial/political/language affiliations. That you have (arguably) identified the strongest division as “+tribal, -religious”, while potentially important, does not support your conclusion. In fact, these forces are not at all mutually exclusive. And contra your “tribal but not religion” thesis, Iran’s theocracy is decidedly anti-Israel and uses religious rhetoric to reinforce and spread its position. Moreover, whenever Arab Muslims indigenous to the same region come into contact with each other, they frequently (not always, obviously) get along. Among the most notable (not the only, obviously) contradiction to this is when neighbors differ as to whether they are Sunni or Shia.
Again, I don’t think that pointing to other factors diminishes my argument at all. My logic follows two prongs:
1) YES! Tribalism matters. Tribes can be racial/linguistic/religious, etc.;
2) When no other factor can distinguish tribes, time and time again religion is an effective way of distinguishing people who otherwise have common interests, or at least not wildly divergent ones.
In short, yes, religion most certainly does play an important role in strife in the Middle East. To suggest that it does not simply because you can identify other factors that also play roles is a non sequitur. I’m open to examining data that suggests that religion doesn’t play a role. But simply pointing out that it isn’t the only factor doesn’t do that. And in particular, the value that Jews and Muslims (and Christians) place on “the Holy land” and Jerusalem in particular, is important. Additionally, pan-Muslim sympathy (including Indonesians) for the Palestinians and pan-Christian sympathy for the Israelis (at least in the U.S.) is indicative of how lines are drawn along tribal lines that are entirely religious in nature.
A pan-Semitic identity could probably have been fostered between Arabs and Middle Eastern Jews, but Israel was mostly founded by European Jews, which smacked of colonialism to many Arabs.
Ugh ugh ugh. All the girls in those primary schools are muffled in eyebrow-to-chin hijab. I saw only one secondary school girl who wasn’t in hijab. The girls played football in hijab and skirts down to their feet.
Yes, ugh, ugh, ugh, as you say. It was positively creepy watching these children cloaked away from the eyes of the world. That in itself is an anti-educational statement for every girl who is treated that way. It’s positively stifling, and should not be allowed.
I thought girls that young were not required to wear hijab. For example, the Wikipedia article on hijab says
But I guess the earlier we can get ’em trained to be docile and submissive, the better.
The thing that puzzles me is girls who wear some type of headscarf then wear figure hugging clothes. That shows it is not about the ‘spiritual’ – they care only about conforming to the cultural norm for the sake of their parents & still want to ‘rebel’. It can be hard for girls/young women to break away from ridiculous cultural ‘traditions’.
no clue why people are so fucking blind when it comes to religion
I haven’t had time to look at the video yet, and won’t for a while, but are these schools actually ‘faith schools’ funded by the British state? If they are,then an even greater fuss needs to be made (and a few heads should surely – metaphorically – roll). And the matter should be taken at the governmental level – carpeting the Saudi ambassador would be a good idea.
Some are state schools, yes, and some are private.
All religions are garbage, but its the believers themselves who count. What is the number of U.K and American Muslims who hold to the Qu’ranic view? As Joshi notes, even fundamentalists don’t endorse all the weird commandments, and evidently even Orthodox Jews don’t want stoning,etc.
By the way Orthodox Rabbi David Hartman in 2002 told his congregation the truth that there was no Exodus and no Moses and David was just a tribal chief. Yet , he remains Orthodox.
Faith doth that to people!
I prefer knowing that our telenomus world has no God. I never have really wanted one, just want to know if there was one.And I never thought about any future state!
http://Ignostic Morgan’s Blog.word press.com
Back to your discussion of Buddhism.Afghanistan was once a Buddhist country.That is until the religion of peace arrived,and wiped it out.Now we have the Taliban.Would we see the vile treatment of women if iit was still Buddhist.Well never know,but ill vote no.
Probably not nearly as vile, but China and Nepal aren’t exactly havens for women’s rights. In those cases, though, it stems from cultural traditions and not any specific teachings of Buddhism.
Oh, typical religious bigoted behaviour, lying to get by and just to pass off as legit.
Hey, as long as they’re taught evolution we secularists shouldn’t care, right?
As Islam infiltrates the West, don’t be caught ostriching. Keep up with global daily news free:
http://tinyurl.com/islamwatch