Hajj pilgrims stone 'devil' Bush, Sharon, Blair

[Erikl]

Let me first say contrary to some people's stereotyped beliefs here, and as I said before, I don't think at all along religious lines and divisions, and since I live in what you would call the Muslim world, I know the dire need for reforms here and in the way others perceive the said world. However, one can not expect reforms in the Islamic world when nobody else outside does their own reforms and modify their way of seeing things.

And let me quote something from an earlier post of mine here in this thread:

“I'm not saying that they are totally wrong and everybody else are totally right - there's no black and white in this issue.”

I have never said it’s the Muslim’s world alone who is to be blamed, but considering that most of the conflicts around the world, may there be ethnic, religious, or territorial, are now when muslims are fighting non-muslims (or muslims fighting muslims).

In Kasmir it is a conflict over territory and mainly between the old rivals India and Pakistan. Of course both these countries exploit the religious differences between the people there to their own benefits and for reaching their own goals. It is totally wrong to think that this is a religious war between Muslims and Hindus since if this had been the case there would have been a bloody civil war in India which is obviously not the case.

Why do you think that there is a separate Pakistan and India in the first place? The division originated from religious conflict between the two. Both Indians and Pakistanis know that they are the same people. I once heard an Indian who told me: “you are lucky that your enemy is so different from you; we have to fight our own people”.

Kashmir is only one of the differences between Pakistan and India, but it is under no circumstances the cause for their conflict. They had many wars before the one over Kashmir, with hundreds of thousands of casualties on both sides.

And also, many times in the news you hear about a Hindu mob clashing with Muslim mob in India and Pakistan.

In the Balkans; as everybody knows the Serbs were massacrering Muslims while the whole civilized Europe was watching. The Serb war criminals, and at their head Milosevich started the massacres and if it had not been for the Americans to come all the way from across the Atlantic to put an end to what was one of the most barberic ethnic cleansing of history, and clean up the mess in the middle of Europe, god knows where all that would have ended up. If you think that was a war started by Muslims against Christians you are totally mistaken and revising history which is still too early in this case.

Wrong, wrong, and again – wrong.

I’m sorry, but what the media described and told about that war, and what actually took place, is totally different. But what can you expect – the media needs a distinct villain and a distinct victim. You can’t have a much more grayish, blur picture now, can you?

The truth is, in the case of the Balkan war, that it was much worse. Much, much worse. Who were the victims? Everybody – the Serbs, the Croatians, and the Bosnians.

The Croatians, led by ultra-nationalists, recruited neo-Nazis from all over Europe and North America. The last Nazi tank assault wasn’t in 1945, it was in 1995 (they even had the swastika flags risen over the tanks). They massacred the Serbs for being “inferior, orthodox, Slavs” (not that the Croatians weren’t Slavs… as I said, it’s complicated).

The Bosnians, on the other hand, recruited Al-Qaeda volunteers from all over the world, and committed suicide attacks against the Serbs, for the sake of Jihad. The Serbs, massacred the Bosnians, established concentration camps where they imprisoned Bosnians who most of them had nothing to do with the bunch of radical Bosnians.

In the hand, they were all both the victims and the villains. IMO, both the Croatian, Bosnian, and Serbian leaders should all be tried for war crimes.

However, even if you do take into account the version led out by the news agencies, then still, it doesn’t matter – Christians and Muslims have been fighting each other over there (and as Bosnians and Serbians are the same people, the only possible difference between them is their religion).

In Chechnya it is the Russians that ruined the local people's town and villages just because they wanted their independence. Again this is not a religious war started by Muslims against Christians as you are so wrongly implying. Of course the savegary of the Russians led to what has now become Chechnyan terrorism.

Chechnya is complicated. Where it used to be an uprising against Russian colonialism, it evolved into a holy war against Christians, and it is well known the Al-Qaeda members and other extremists are involved in Chechen terrorism.

And anyhow, most Chechens want to be Russian citizens. So this conflict now is a religious one.

The Lebanese civil war was the result of foreign interventions in that country and if that had been a crusade type war, countries like Syria would not have sided with some Christian militias and the war would still be going on now since the ethnic landscape of Lebanon has not changed at all.

LOL !!!

The Lebanese civil war had it’s origins in the 1950s, when the US and other western powers succeeded in stopping it. The later civil war was the direct result of the PLO’s actions against the Lebanese Christians.

The reason why the Syrians first allied themselves with the Christians was that the Syrian Baath part was a secular, un-religious party, a rivality between the PLO and Syria (Syria saw Israel as “southern Syria”, while the PLO saw it as “Palestine”), and the fact that Assad himself isn’t a real Muslim (he is Alawi, and you yourself know they are not exactly Muslims…).

It doesn’t matter though, cause soon after Syria and Iran became allies in that war, and they both sided with the radical Shiites, creating the Hezbollah, and Lebanese proxy of the “Revolution Guard” .

In western Sudan, the ones being killed by the Sudanese army and the militia are Muslims, so are the militia and the army. So you're wrong again in implying that it is a religious war. It is an ethnic war between the Arabs and the non-Arabs there. The war in the South is of the same nature, only against a different ethnic group. I find it horrendous that nobody interfers to put an end to the ethnic conflicts in the Sudan. About Nigeria, I don't really know enough about the situation there to comment, but I haven't heard of any calls by Muslims for a holly war in Nigeria.

I’m not talking merely about the Darfour district – it is well known that a 30 years civil war is going on between the Muslims in the north and the Christians in the south.

Nigeria goes by the same rule.

In western China the majority are Muslims and it is their home there. Chinese have had problems with all religions, just look at Tibet. All they want is to be able to practice their faith freely, something they had done for centuries before communist China. They want their basic human rights to be respected and your implications that Muslims are at fault in China and that they have declared a religious war on the Buddist there is completely wrong.

Nonsense. China isn’t good enough for you? Let’s look on the radical Muslims in southern Thailand, or on the conflict between Indonesia and East Timor, or on the rivality between Malaysia and Singapore.

All the cases above are where Muslims and Buddhists are in conflict, doesn’t matter if it’s territorial, ethnic, or religious.

And keep in mind that I see inner-muslim conflict in the same light as I see muslims vs. non-muslims conflicts – IMO, it’s all part of the same problem.

The Arab-Israeli conflict, as the name suggests is a war over territory. This particular war is the direct result of the Israeli occupation of land. If this had been a religious war between Muslims and Jews, it would not have been limited to Palestine but would have involved Jews and Muslims everywhere which is obviously not the case. So again this war does not fall into the category of religious wars that Muslims have declared on the whole world. This idea is more of a fantasy than the real situation.

Don’t make me laugh, please.

Do you really believe that the conflict between Israel and the Arabs started in 1967?

And if not, do you imply that Israel’s existence is an occupation itself? That we don’t have the right to exist in our forefathers’ land???

The fact that most of the conflict between Jews and muslims is concentrated in Israel vs. the Arab world, is because Israel is the only Jewish-majority country in the world. Also, half of the Jewish population of the world lives in Israel. It’s like saying that a conflict between India and a muslim country cannot be about religion, because it is only concentrated in India (there is no other Hindu majority country in the world that I’m aware of).

And again, you are wrong here as well.

The attacks on Palestinian Jews by Palestinian Arabs predating the establishment of the state of Israel have culminated in the Jerusalem pogrom of April, 1920, the riots in Palestine of May, 1921, the 1929 Hebron massacre and the Great Uprising of 1936-1939. Prominent leaders of Palestinian terror groups were Sheikh Izz ad-Din al-Qassam (hanged by the British) and the pro-Nazi Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin Al-Husseini (deported).

Up until 1956 Israel had suffered hundreds of terror attacks from the West Bank (occupied by Jordan). In 1964, the PLO was founded in order to "liberate all of Palestine". The Article 24 of the organization's original charter, the Palestinian National Covenant states in part: "This Organization does not exercise any territorial sovereignty over the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, [or] on the Gaza Strip...".

And as for it going on only in Israel – wrong again. Before 1948, there were 800,000 Jews living in the Arab world. Today there are only 10,000. Those Jews lived there long before the Arabs came from the Arabian Peninsula, and long before Islam was even thought of. Those Jews have been ethnically cleansed, most of them escaped into Israel, the other went to France.

Speaking of France, btw, what do you call the huge number of attacks against Jews done by Muslim immigrants in recent years, if not a conflict between Jews and Muslims outside of the middle-east?

And what about the suicide attack in the two synagogues in Turkey just a year ago? And what about the suicide attacks committed by Hezbollah against Jewish community centers in Argentina in 1994?

As for Muslims against Muslims, I have explained before that this statement is a logical contradiction since if both sides were Muslims they wouldn't fight a religious war against each other.

No, it isn’t self-contradictory, because it just shows you that not only do muslims not getting along with other religions, they have many conflicts on-going between themselves, thus proving the original point I and several others have been trying to make, which is that the biggest oppressors of muslims in recent history are muslims themselves!

I don't know where you got the idea that I was blaming the West or anybody else for that matter, and as long as people believe being a Muslim means an automatic anti-Western stance, I can't help but to think that they have huge stereotypes formed in their minds and a misunderstanding of great proportions.

Do I really have to post here speeches of Hebollah, Hamas, Al-Qaeda, Islamic Brotherhood, etc. and Iranian, past Iraqi, Lybian, and Syrian clerics against the west? Or should I post here pictures of burned western flags? Or western flags with Nazi symbols on them?

Don’t be naïve. I know you’re a lot smarter than that.

But, you are right – I too believe it isn’t something inherently within Islam. Most of the muslims aren’t like that. They, just like any other people, want to live their daily life. The problem is, that their countries and religion institutes have been hijacked by a bunch of lunatics in the last century.

[zephyr]

You should have more knowledge than most about it ,as long as you keep down the middle and not stray most of us will listen gladly

Some of the views expressed on this board are so extreme and full of emotions (national, religious, etc...) that it is not really hard at all to keep 'down the middle'.

Among some of these extremists are people with a holly war against America, and some with a holly war against Islam. There are also those who fully encourage these holly wars to their own benefit and would like nothing more than to inflame them. This thread is a typical example among many; it usually begins with a totally biased article which is directed to bring out well planted emotions against Islam ( or America). Then we got the extremists going at full speed throwing around their stereotyped opinions and hatred. Here, we had an article with two vague quotes from two individuals in Mecca against America (please note that there are millions of Muslims with different opinions right now in Mecca, but we only get the two opinions that are needed for a particular purpose). Then the extremists take over and call 'barberic' what a quarter of humanity believe in, based only on those two opinions and their own ignorance. Of course the same method is used by the holly wariors against America and the West in general. In fact most of the time the words 'Islam' and 'America' are perfectly interchangable in some of the hate inciting articles and the comments that follow. Personally I believe as long as religion, nationality and ethnicity are exploited by a few in power and used by simple minded people to get rid of thier own complexes, we will continue to live in a divided and dangerous world. The real war is not between religions or nationalities, but between knowledge and ignorance and those who exploit it.

[zephyr]

Erik; although I disagree with most of what you say about these wars and the reasons behind them (the reasons for this disagreement have been posted before), on China ( a totalitarian communist state that has a long history of repressing ethnic groups) the Balkans and Chechnya( Al-Qaeda didn't even exist at the time of the Bosnian conflict, and are you telling us that America came to help Al-Qaeda in Bosnia?), you are really far off track. However this conversation was not about who's right and who's wrong in different political conflicts around the world. In spite of your denials, you were implying that somehow Muslims as a block ( which in reality does not exist) have declared a holly war on the whole world. I was trying to say that most of these conflicts have their roots elsewhere and religion and nationality are used to exploit the situation (refere to my reply to Warden for my views on this matter).

Oh, and btw I'm neither Hezbollah nor any other group you refered to. You have a way of using the word 'you' that's quite confusing to me.

Most of your analysis about religious wars don't hold very well. since religion does not recognize national boundaries, then religious wars of any nature should not be concentrated in one area. Political conflicts might exploit religion, but that doesn't make the conflict a religious war.

Btw, it might interest you to know that India has more Muslims living in it than most of the so called Islamic World's country. In spite of occasional conflicts no religious war exists between Muslims and Hindus. The same goes for Russia (50 million Muslims), and if there was a war between Christians and Muslims there as you falsly claim, you and I would not be sitting here talking about it.

[Erikl]

the Balkans and Chechnya( Al-Qaeda didn't even exist at the time of the Bosnian conflict, and are you telling us that America came to help Al-Qaeda in Bosnia?)

Ofcourse Al-Qaeda existed back then .

Did u hear about the car bomb in the WTC at NY back in 1993?

Or the Mujhadin in Afghanistan (which the US practically built), that's where Al-Qaeda orginated?

The Bosnian war started in the mid 1990. Al-Qaeda was already planning it's 9/11 attacks (they admitted if I'm not mistaken that it took them 8 years to plan the attack, which means they started planning them back in 1993, probably after the first attempt failed).

Also, the US was fighting Al-Qaeda in Somalia back in 1993.

But if western forces were backing up the Croatians (which used neo-Nazi units in their corps, as well as a Nazi armoured unit), and the Mujhadin in Afghanistan, why are you so surprised to learn that they were also supporting Al-Qaeda in the Balkans?

[The Caspian Hare]

tw, it might interest you to know that India has more Muslims living in it than most of the so called Islamic World's country. In spite of occasional conflicts no religious war exists between Muslims and Hindus. The same goes for Russia (50 million Muslims), and if there was a war between Christians and Muslims there as you falsly claim, you and I would not be sitting here talking about it.

First of all Russia's population is only about 150 million, so if this were true then one third of Russia would be Muslim, and I know this is not the case.

Second of all and more importantly, Zephyr, you are attempting to ignore the religious component of these conflicts. To some extent these are religious wars. The fact is that many Muslims are fighting non-Muslims around the world in the name of their religion. For example you casually claim that there is little or no religious conflict in India when in fact India has been wracked by horrendous religious violence that has killed thousands of people - in Gujarat, among other places. And then there's the Kashmir. You know damn well that a lot of the people fighting for independence/unification with Pakistan are fighting, at least in part, for their faith.

And about the Israeli-Palestinean issue: at least one of the reasons for this conflict's importance in the minds of Muslims is the significance Jerusalem has in Islamic theology and early Islamic history.

Nobody is saying that Islam is some monolithic bloc, and that Islam as a whole is at war with the West. You're not the only one who is aware of the ideological divisions in the Islamic world. Islam is, however, a uniting force whose appeal transcends national boundaries. Today, a great many people in the Islamic war are at war with the West or are ideologically aligned with those who are doing the actual fighting. It would be foolish and dangerous to ignore the religious aspect of their motivation.

[zephyr]

Or the Mujhadin in Afghanistan (which the US practically built), that's where Al-Qaeda orginated?

You're mixing up the Mujahedin in Afghanistan with Al-Qaeda. The US did not build the Mujahedin, but helped them fight against the 'evil empire'. Al-qaeda did not originate from Afghanistan, they were allowed to used the country as a base for a while. You need to check your facts on Afghanistan and Al-qaeda.

But if western forces were backing up the Croatians (which used neo-Nazi units in their corps, as well as a Nazi armoured unit), and the Mujhadin in Afghanistan, why are you so surprised to learn that they were also supporting Al-Qaeda in the Balkans?

Again you're mixing up stuff. Let me see if I can sort it out for you. I don't really see what the US support for Mujaheddin has to do with the neo-nazis in Croatia.

In the Balkans people were being massacred in day light (with the Europeans looking on) and the US intervened (late), to put an end to that barbarism. Don't waste your time in trying to convince me that the US came to help Al-Qaeda out in the Balkans.

[zephyr]

tw, it might interest you to know that India has more Muslims living in it than most of the so called Islamic World's country. In spite of occasional conflicts no religious war exists between Muslims and Hindus. The same goes for Russia (50 million Muslims), and if there was a war between Christians and Muslims there as you falsly claim, you and I would not be sitting here talking about it.

First of all Russia's population is only about 150 million, so if this were true then one third of Russia would be Muslim, and I know this is not the case.

Second of all and more importantly, Zephyr, you are attempting to ignore the religious component of these conflicts. To some extent these are religious wars. The fact is that many Muslims are fighting non-Muslims around the world in the name of their religion. For example you casually claim that there is little or no religious conflict in India when in fact India has been wracked by horrendous religious violence that has killed thousands of people - in Gujarat, among other places. And then there's the Kashmir. You know damn well that a lot of the people fighting for independence/unification with Pakistan are fighting, at least in part, for their faith.

And about the Israeli-Palestinean issue: at least one of the reasons for this conflict's importance in the minds of Muslims is the significance Jerusalem has in Islamic theology and early Islamic history.

Nobody is saying that Islam is some monolithic bloc, and that Islam as a whole is at war with the West. You're not the only one who is aware of the ideological divisions in the Islamic world. Islam is, however, a uniting force whose appeal transcends national boundaries. Today, a great many people in the Islamic war are at war with the West or are ideologically aligned with those who are doing the actual fighting. It would be foolish and dangerous to ignore the religious aspect of their motivation.

461509[/snapback]

About the 50 Million Muslims you're right, actually this is the number of Muslims in the ex Soviet Union. But as you know in all these central Asian republics there are a lot of Orthodox Christians mixed with Muslims and the religious and ethnic maps have not changed much since then. I don't know how many Muslims live in Russia today.

Religion, along with nationality, race and ethnicity have traditionally been tools used to motivate the masses for a certain specific worldly goal (which of course can be a positive goal or a negative one). Who can deny that religion is and has been involved in a lot of bloody conflicts such as the one you mention in India ( The colonial past of the Indian sub continent is not foreign to this phenomenon). But I don't believe that the cause of many conflicts is religious differences. One good example is the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. Territory, water and other resources are the main issue, and not idealogy or religion. Of course one motivating force for both sides is religion, but the roots of the conflict are not religious in that sense. It is evident that there is no holly war declared by Muslims against the rest of the world ( as some were implying), but rather, Islam being used (positively and negatively) in different conflicts ( as other religions are and have been).