Please also don’t feel the need to apologise, Muslims who feign outrage (as we are witnessing at the moment around the world) really get up our nose too.

Non-Muslims often feel that we are porcupines that curl up into a little ball, whenever someone challenges us.

I just wanted to say that religious Muslims (such as us) do hold reasonable views (in addition to being wild eyed, bearded, pyjama wearing fundamentalists)

Please accept my apology. My words reflect only my lack of understanding; I intended no abuse.

Thank you for your answer. It was illuminating.

I suppose that I should begin with a clarification. I am not a “religious moderate”, indeed around this place, that term is one of abuse.

I am not a moderate Muslim, in the same way that you would not be of moderate intellect or moderate truthfulness. All the authors here would consider themselves religious fundamentalists.

The religious moderates can be found here: (clutching their teddy bears)

http://austrolabe.com/2006/06/.....acre-wood/

SO this is the really interesting part of the discussion, How can I hold such views and be a religious medievalist/fundementalist ? The response is of course that these views are mainstream views held be my fundamentalist religious teachers, which I (ipso facto) endorse.

I suppose that if someone told me to convert at sword point, I also would refuse (so we are in agreement) Such a conversion would not be religiously valid anyway.

As for the bleak future that you imagine, many Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan would say that it has already come to pass.

Sunni Islam is not bedevilled with multiple religious sects, in the same way Christianity is. But there are a wide variation of political views. An example of this is the religious belief of a Bin Laden is not to dissimilar to most Muslims on every important religious question, but where we differ profoundly, is his willingness to ignore vast chunks of established religious law, in order to achieve a short term political end. In that respect he is the religious innovator and the “moderate” Muslim and not I.

Do I fear an apocalypse for the Muslim world at the hands of an Imperial America ? No I don’t fear anything except God.

If I have any worries, then it is in the opposite direction, that Americans will cross some invisible line of mechanised barbarity and your beautiful civilisation will be destroyed by God.

The Muslim Ummah is much more complex (and often contradictory), then many non-muslims appreciate. If you peruse the posts here it may surprise you to know that some of us draw our religious instruction (at least in part) from the most conservative school of religious thought in Saudi Arabia

So my defence of the Jews is not in a flight from by faith, but is in fact instructed by it.

I stumbled on this site for the first time today. I would like to ask your opinion; perhaps you will be so kind as to answer.

I will begin by telling you about myself, to establish at least some context. I am an American, and an atheist. I know much about Christianity, and little about Islam other than what I see and read in the news.

There are many Christian sects, and they have a very wide range of beliefs. I imagine that the same is likely true of Islam, but what I see on television and read in the news is always the same. Violent men who will stop at nothing. Men who kill women and children in the name of God, and tell me that I must submit to Islam or die.

I will never submit.

I don’t believe that these men represent all Muslims, or most. But they speak with the loudest voices, and their actions cannot be ignored. And I have not forgotten the mobs I saw celebrating in the streets after the Towers fell. The men who kill for God may be a minority, but they appear to have much support. They loom so large that to me they have in fact become Islam. The quiet Muslims, the ones who believe that in matters of religion there is no compulsion, they are absent from the stage of world events. Their silence is deafening.

I fear that the men who kill for God will eventually commit some act so heinous that it will at last awaken the wrath of the west. On that day, one I hope can be avoided, there will be a slaughter the likes of which the world has never seen. I fear we will annihilate much of the Muslim world. I want to learn how to avoid this, if it is possible.

You seem to me the almost mythical (from my experience) moderate Muslim. Do you have any words for me? I ask with all sincerity.

There is always hope of conciliation and we are optimistic that Muslims and Jews will resume a harmonious relationship that has previously lasted a millennium.

SF

Baybers

In a world where rational, clear thinking is often rare in matters such as these, and sensationalism (wherever it comes from) is highlighted, your words help me believe there is hope for conciliation.

I hope you are, or will become, a leader of your community.

Your Jewish Brother