Salman Rushdie discovers the bloomin' obvious

And while we're on Salman Rushdie, can anyone fill me in on Khalid Duran?

*waits for another nariz rant in the meantime*

Salman Rushdie seems to have little gratitude for the fact that fundamentalist Christians the world over have supported him.

It really pisses me off, to be blunt.

I don't know what to say. Here's somebody who's had to live the last, oh, two and half decades or so with a death threat courtesy of Islam over his head and is as bloomin' clueless as they come. How someone that stupid has managed to live this long after having the Fatwa issued is beyond me. Unbelievable.

A pompous nincompoop and purveyor of mediocre literature.

Fundamentalists of all faiths are the fundamental evil of our time

I guess Salmon has to say that to keep from having another Fatwa issued against him.

Would someone please explain to me how fundamental Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, etc... are fundamentally evil.

What he really means is all religions suck, but saying it that way doesn't sound as profound as his silly statement.

That's why I never believe this man is "friend of the west" and I disagree that his signature is put at bottom of any so-called document for western freedom.

Fundamentalists of all faiths are the fundamental evil of our time.

Quite an assinine statement. Fundamentalist Christians (i.e., those that follow the fundamental requirements of the faith as set down in the Scriptures) are to love God with all our hearts, mind and strength, to feed and clothe the poor, love our neighbor, pray for our enemies and those in authority over us, make disciples in every nation, be humble...shall I go on?

Nowhere in the New Testament does one find any commands remotely resembling what is in the koran. In the one instance where someone raised a sword in supposed defense of our faith...Peter striking the ear off one of the soldier's arresting Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane...he was clearly rebuked by Jesus!

Fundamentalists of all faiths are the fundamental evil of our time.

Don't get me wrong -- I absolutely enjoy reading this site, and believe that the West is grossly underestimating the, eh hem, intentions of Islam -- and I don't restrict this to simply the most radical fringes of Islam. To lambaste Rushdie for this comment shows, however, an equal degree of moral relativism.

Of couse Christians haven't declared a fatwa on Rushdie; he didn't deconstruct Christianity in his behemouth of a novel. Remember: tomes against the foundations of Christianity create headlines, money, but also create death threats (as occured to Dan Brown). True Story.

Maybe he's trying to say, and you have to agree, zealots of any flavor are dangerous.

Right?

This fraud known as Salmon Rushdie has been living off the gullible 'multiculturists' in the West for too long.

He is a muslim.

He supports the muslims in "palestine" and Kashmir.

He is a Michael Moore reverse alternate image.

He wouldn't know the truth if it hit him in his hypocritical face.

Accordingly his output suffers the same fecal defects.

"Salman Rushdie seems to have little gratitude for the fact that fundamentalist Christians the world over have supported him.

It really pisses me off, to be blunt.

Posted by: pastorius"

Really? From what I could observe when all that was going on, fundamentalist Christians didn't give a shit about Salman Rushdie. Wasn't one of theirs. They were too busy demonstrating and spreading anti-Semitic lies and hate propaganda about Scorcese's film "The Last Temptation of Christ." (Interestingly, Muslim fanatics also railed against that film, and thoroughly approved of the more recent "passion of the Christ" by our favourite "Christian" fanatic Mel Gibson.) And trying to get gays fired from their jobs and kicked out of the military and forcing women to have babies against their will and stopping people teaching science in public schools etc. etc... those were their priorities while radical Islam was spreading its cancer throughout the world, not standing up for pluralism, tolerance, freedom of expression, and women's rights. Fundamentalist Christians of the likes of Falwell and Robertson made things easier for the other fanatics, not harder. Those two swine had the audacity to sit there right after Sept. 11 and basically blame the tolerance of homosexuality, seual freedom, and reproductive rights in America on the attacks, rather than directly blame the animals who flew the planes into the towers. God's wrath being visited on Sodom, so to speak. And you're trying to tell me they weren't doing some of the Islamo-fascists' work for them? As a Christian (yes, a liberal, feminist, pro-gay, pro-choice Christian!) I am sickened by these men. I will not trust them to fight this battle for me.

O.K., so if Salman had written something offensive about Jesus most fundamentalists would not actually have called for his death. I accept that they don't do things that way any more and applaud them for it. I'm not saying they are just as bad as the Islamofascits, NOW. What offends me is their silence when extremists of OTHER faiths advocate and commit atrocities in the name of faith, then their turning around and blaming it all on religious moderates or the non-religious in their societies.

so forgive those who doubt the ability of fundamentalists of any faith to act rationally. They've demonstrated time and again their proclivity for getting into bed, so to speak, with anyone who agrees with their notion that religious faith should supercede everything else.

He writes anymore of those idiotic unreadable long winded mindnumbing diatribes and Im reverting and taking care of him myself.
The guy is a natural born house painter who missed his calling.

... the victims terrorized by radical Muslims are mostly other Muslims.

Couldn't happen to a nicer group of people.

All Moslems are radical, some are just more active in carrying out the Koran's commandments and Sunnah examples than others. All Moslems should choke on their own terror, as it emanates from the Koran and Hadiths.

* 33:21 * 33:21 * 33:21 * 33:21 * 33:21 * 33:21 * 33:21 * 33:21 * 33:21 * 33:21 * 33:21 *

What on earth can possibly be moderate about an ideology that calls for world takeover by threat, extortion, and murder? How many kidnappings and enslavements did Mohammed personally oversee?

Somebody please draw a profile of a moderate Moslem. Can't be done cuz it's a logical impossibility. Give it your best shot.

I'm not in a position to analyze it at this time, but it is fascinating and disturbing that we have managed to arrive at a point in history where a statement like,

"Fundamentalists of all types are the fundamental evil of our time."

which SHOULD be true and reasonable and 'moderate' and sensible and beyond dispute is actually just so much stomach-churning B.S., which, I suspect, is not even believed by those who utter it.

The Middle Way is not between extremists and Salman Rushdie (and Tom Friedman, Andrew Sullivan, Bill Maher...) "All-extremists-are-the-problem" types, but is rather between Jihadists and Jihadist-apologists.

Anyone who disgorges this superfically sensible but deeply ridiculous nonsense is simply not in any sense of the word, "reasonable."

Robert,
I hate to say it, but I think that you are off this time. "Christian fundamentalists have never pronounced any death fatawa on him or anyone else" is not exactly true.

Pat Robertson (who is a fundamentalist Christian) suggested that the USA should assassinate the President of Venezuela.

While technically, it's not a relgious decree like a fatwa and he did apologize for it (though I'm sure his apology was not sincere), he did make the statement.

Its the Qu'ran, stupid.

Anyone who benefits from progress in science and technology and at the same time is religious fundamentalist is either unthinking or hypocrite.

AngloIrishSlay,
Your point is valid. Thanks for pointing that out.

But, the fact remains that I am a Christian Fundamentalist, and I did support Rushdie from the beginning and so did most of the Christian Fundamentalists that I know.

But, that's my anecdotal evidence, I guess.

Poor old Salman just can't let go of his beloved islam, despite being the victim of its irrational intolerance. Not only is he helpless to disown, disavow, and jettison the instrument of his exile and death sentence, he throws in the hackneyed religious equivalence canard for good measure.

I have little sympathy for this man. It is obvious that despite being given refuge in the West for many years, his first loyalty is to islam.

Simplymisguided,

The fatwa levied against Rushdie was issued by an Ayatollah, which would be the equivalent of a Catholic cardinal (higher than an archbishop, and bishop and Pastor and priest).

Death threats to Dan Brown weren't official edicts from a church official, as was the case with Rushdie.

But yet it appears that you are making the case that both religions are equal
Moral equivalence stretched past all logic

yaafm

So, does the fact that I wouldn't mind seeing Chavez take a .338 Lapua between the eyes make me a Christian Fundamentalist? Despite all of his clownish rhetoric and bluster, he is a real threat.

Funny thing around here that some people think it's the Christian Fundies that support the mohammedans, others think it's the Godless Leftists. Some think it's the Bible Believers that make up the hosts opposing the jihadists, others think the Liberal Left man the walls defending freedom and such.

When all the generals finally decide which uniform to wear, please don't forget to tell the troops in the trenches who to shoot.

Too much arguing in the backseat while the car sits idling in the driveway.

"Fundamentalists of all faiths are the fundamental evil of our time."

This is an odd statement, and one that cannot be backed up with facts. Most great evils are state sponsored, and the only fundamentalist regimes on the planet are islamic. There are no other religious regimes, fundamentalist or otherwise. The state sponsored and social evils of islam are well documented on this site, but it's important to note that all other state sponsored acts of evil in the world are secular in nature. Wars, oppression and tyranny are primarily secular pursuits--and have been for centuries. The majority of the world's dictatorships, kleptocracies and other failed states are secular.

The evils of our time caused by private enterprise and crime are also overwhelmingly secular, particularly murder.

Religions such as Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Zoroastrianism attempt to curb the evil impulses of mankind. Fundamentalists of these faiths make an extra effort to lead law-abiding, productive, and charitable lives.

By any measure available, they do just that. The crimes rate of Fundamentalist Christians, Jews and Buddhists are negligible compared to religious moderates and atheists in America. Their families are more stable, they're more involved in their communities, and they donate far more money to charity. In fact, Christians, particularly fundamentalists, spend more time, energy and money on the needy than all of the world's governments combined, and they do it more effectively.

The only dangerous fundamentalists are muslim and secular fundamentalists. Muslims and secularists are actively oppressing other religions around the world. Other religions do not oppress muslims or atheists.

Salman Rushdie is an ass, and his hatred is misplaced. Unfortunately, there are legions of hate mongering atheist hypocrites who feel exactly as he does. Only islam and the Marxist left want to impose their ideology on the rest of us. The rest of us prefer the democratic method.

False faiths are the fundamental evil of our time.

Pagan:

Religious people are responsible for the vast majority of history's scientific and technological progress.

Sorry to be the one to break it to you. If you weren't such a fanatic, you would have seen it yourself.

Tell me. What has atheism ever accomplished?

Fundamentalists of all faiths are the fundamental evil of our time.

Equating Christians who believe on the Word of God (fundamentalist Christianity) to fundamentalist Islam (terrorists who believe and act on the Koran).

Absolutely sickening.

I've heard this same talk before from UK government officials and even certain faith organizations:

David Blunkett: "It's what distinguishes us of every faith from those who would take our lives because they reject our faith. It applies equally to far-Right evangelical Christians as to extremists in the Islamic faith."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/07/08/nyusuf08.xml

A poll by USA Today:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2001/11/15/poll-catholics.htm

Let's hope people are waking up to the truth.

Jeff Bargholz wrote:
"Religious people are responsible for the vast majority of history's scientific and technological progress."

That's correct, which is why it infuriates me when people take a backward-thinking, irrational, anti-science approach, anti-intellectual approach in the name of their so-called religion, which has happened and continues to happen in Christian communities, including my own. It frustrates me to have to point out, over 100 years after the fact, that Darwin was NOT an atheist, that he was a scientist and also a man of faith and did not see any conflict between the two. I find it hard to believe that God gave us this amazing intellect if He did not intend for us to use it. Looking back even further, how about Galileo? Where would be now if the short-sighted church authorities had succeeded in shutting him up before he could achieve anything? He wasn't acting against God, the church, or his faith either, but certain authorities with their own vested interests tried to make it look that way.

However, this does not logically follow that you have to be religious to make great discoveries and do great things. People of faith have to accept that nonbelievers can and have accomplished great things for humanity too. Our faith should be strong and secure enough that it is not threatened by this knowledge. This is where I start to get annoyed with certain Christian anti-Jihadists, this chauvinism about their religion and endless need to demonstrate their religion's superiority. It really starts to become nauseating, and to my mind completely irrelevant. It's like they're trying to use the Jihadist threat, which is real, for propaganda purposes, an argument for a stronger institutionalization of Christianity in Western society. That's not gonna happen, and it's not what we need to happen to defeat the jihadists. What we need is honesty, courage and selflessness. And atheists (other than Marxists and hard-core leftists!) can be as honest, brave, and selfless as the rest of us. Believe me, I've seen it. We need to work together on this, not split apart into factions of religious and non-religious.

angloirishslav:

Are you suggesting that I'm a "chauvinist trying to use the Jihadist threat, which is real, for propaganda purposes, an argument for a stronger institutionalization of Christianity in Western society?" If so, what are you basing that assumption on?

Yes atheists can be brave and selfless. Unfortunately, most of them are anything but. 99.9% of American atheists are nothing but ignorant Christa- bashers who believe in nothing. They base their nihilism on rejected faith and a hatred of Christianity, not scientific principle. Rational atheists seeking the truth are becoming a dying breed.

Most atheists are unabashed leftists. They have absolutely no interest in working with people who dare to disregard their ideology. Their hatred is as pathological as that of the jihadis, with whom they've formed an "unholy alliance."

You're going to be waiting a long time for the University elites, Establishment Media elites and Cindy Sheehans of the country to join the Crusade. They're all staunchly anti-religion, despite their alliance of convenience with islam.

"99.9% of American atheists are nothing but ignorant Christa- bashers who believe in nothing."
"Most atheists are unabashed leftists."

Really? Where did you get these statistics? Did you do your own little very scientific, unbiased study?

"You're going to be waiting a long time for the University elites, Establishment Media elites and Cindy Sheehans of the country to join the Crusade."

I'm not waiting for them at all; I've long since given up on most of them.

I believe there are many, as you put it "rational atheists seeking the truth" out there, but they are put off, and rightfully so, by hard-line religiosity that discredits their ability to do good in this world. As long as they resepct people of faith, they have a right to be respected back.

And this is not a "Crusade"; it's a war.

Jeff,
I am neither atheist fanatic. I myself have derived great inspirations from Christ and Bible. What I mean by religious fundamentalism is the use of religion for inspiration and comfort as long as it does not insist on the validity of unfounded claims and superstitions, sort of which have been used by churches for persecuting Galieleo or insistence on the claim that earth was created just 5000 years before or Christ is going to come down from clouds in next 50 years to save us or that there are 72 virgins in heaven once you kill yourself chanting allahuakbar etc. and imposition of these on others by framing policies based on them.

Jeff,
I am neither atheist fanatic. I myself have derived great inspirations from Christ and Bible. What I mean by religious fundamentalism is the use of religion for inspiration and comfort as long as it does not insist on the validity of unfounded claims and superstitions, sort of which have been used by churches for persecuting Galieleo or insistence on the claim that earth was created just 5000 years before or Christ is going to come down from clouds in next 50 years to save us or that there are 72 virgins in heaven once you kill yourself chanting allahuakbar etc. and imposition of these on others by framing policies based on them.

Jeff,
I am neither atheist fanatic. I myself have derived great inspirations from Christ and Bible. I do not mind the use of religion for inspiration and comfort as long as it does not insist on the validity of unfounded claims and superstitions, sort of which have been used by organised religions for persecuting Galieleo or insistence on the claim that earth was created just 5000 years before or Christ is going to come down from clouds in next 50 years to save us or that there are 72 virgins in heaven once you kill yourself chanting allahuakbar etc., or superiority of certain castes on the basis of birth or and imposition of these on others by framing policies based on them.

Jeff,
I am neither atheist fanatic. I myself have derived great inspirations from Christ and Bible. I do not mind the use of religion for inspiration and comfort as long as it does not insist on the validity of unfounded claims and superstitions, sort of which have been used by organised religions for persecuting Galieleo or insistence on the claim that earth was created just 5000 years before or Christ is going to come down from clouds in next 50 years to save us or that there are 72 virgins in heaven once you kill yourself chanting allahuakbar etc., or superiority of certain castes on the basis of birth or and imposition of these on others by framing policies based on them.

Jeff,
I am neither atheist fanatic. I myself have derived great inspirations from Christ and Bible. I do not mind the use of religion for inspiration and comfort as long as it does not insist on the validity of unfounded claims and superstitions, sort of which have been used by organised religions for persecuting Galieleo or insistence on the claim that earth was created just 5000 years before or Christ is going to come down from clouds in next 50 years to save us or that there are 72 virgins in heaven once you kill yourself chanting allahuakbar etc., or superiority of certain castes on the basis of birth or and imposition of these on others by framing policies based on them.

Jeff,

Your comment on "99.9% of atheists" bothered me too. I am an atheist, and would not consider myself a leftist (I don't think others generally would either), and don't take any special interest in bashing Christianity more than any other religion. I'm relatively neutral on religion generally because I know there have been both bad and good results of it. I simply believe god does not exist. I find it hard to believe I'm alone among atheists in this respect, though I will admit since I don't belong to any atheist organization I can't say what the accurate percentages would be.

As far as Salman's quote:
"Fundamentalists of all faiths are the fundamental evil of our time."

I disagree. Fundamentalism is not evil per se. The Amish are definitely fundamentalist, and while their laws may be dogmatic and (to my mind) wrongheaded, I would not term them "evil". Their evil is comprised mostly of sexism and racism. Certainly, bad and unfair things can happen within their society -- but these pale in comparison to what occurs regularly in Islamic society.

It's also open to question whether "zealots of any flavor can be dangerous" (though "can be" leaves a heck of a lot of wiggle room). Buddhist monks could likely be termed zealots. Insofar as "zealot" means "pursue with zeal", many priests and rabbis would also be zealots. I have never felt endangered by either.

The more I learn of "the religion of peace" the more it frightens me. Five years ago when I escaped tower 2 I knew nothing of Islam, and would have been perfectly willing to believe it was an isolated incident completely out of line with the tenets of that faith. Indeed, in years since I've looked for real evidence that this was the case. I have not found it.

In short, "fundamentalist" is often simply a pejorative label that masks the fact that to truly know whether someone/thing/etc is evil, one must look at its actual content. "Zealot" is also largely simply a pejorative word. I think most religious rules and beliefs are ridiculous superstitions; but that fact alone does not make them evil.

angloirishslav:

99% of American atheists are religiously tolerant truth seekers. They aren't trying to legislate religious freedom out of existence, slander and belittle Christianity at every opportunity, teach that religion is false in school, turn Christmas into a secular holiday, or shove their nihilistic bullshit down everybody else's throats. Yes, and the Atheist Communist Lawyers Union is hard at work defending religious expression on behalf of all Americans. Where do you live, anyway? Oceania?

Did you do your own very scientific, unbiased little study to support your risible criticisms? Do you have any evidence at all to support your empty rhetoric? You haven't offered any so far. Smarm is no substitute for substance.

If you've given up on the left, why do you continuously appeal to them for aid on this blog? If you think the majority of atheists are anything BUT leftists, you're deluding yourself.

Where are all these rational, truth-seeking atheists you refer to with your scientific, unbiased poll? What are they doing to seek the truth, much less seek to respect the beliefs of others? What "good" are they seeking to do in the world, and how are they being prevented from doing so by "hard line-religiosity?"

NAME ONE THING THAT ATHEISM HAS ACCOMPLISHED.

Atheism is inherently hateful. The Constant claims by atheists that religion is inherently corrupt, hostile, and even evil proves this beyond a doubt. Atheists spend more time demonizing other religions (only Christianity and Judaism of course,) than they do building their own character. They spend more time condemning others than they do trying to aid them.

What has atheism contributed to the world? Nothing. No charity, no fellowship, no moral guidelines, no humility, no comfort and no wisdom.

Keep it. We don't want any part of your miserable philosophy.

Your claim that atheism is under attack by people of faith defies reality. It's doublethink incarnate. Just who is attacking whom, Winston? Not only that, but nothing relies on faith more than atheism. All the pillars of atheist belief are theories, not facts. Big Bang theory, Natural Selection theory, random generation of function specific cooperating organs theory, spontaneous event theory, etc. True or not, it takes a twitchy level of fanaticism and blind faith to accept these things as fact without any proof.

The truth is, most atheists have no respect for religion at all, but they hypocritically demand that religious people respect their own faith. You're a PERFECT example of this mealy-mouthed contradiction.

Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, and every religion except islam do absolutely nothing to prevent atheists from practicing their faith. Atheists are working feverishly to prevent the free excercise of reliogion--and you know it.

This is a war, not a crusade? Just what do you suppose a crusade is? Who do you suppose this crusade is directed against? Do you see what I mean? You object to the word "crusade" because of its religious connotations, and you have the brass bound chutzpah to insinuate that I'm intolerant of atheism.

Let's be honest here. When you rail about the imagined intolerance of "hard-line religiosity," you're including me in that category.

Do yourself a favor. Try to believe what you see, instead of seeing what you believe.

Pagan:

Many atheists derive inspiration from Christ and the Bible, although few admit it. If you say you aren't an atheist or a leftist, I'm willing to take your word. However, claiming that religious people have no business benefiting from science is a deeply bigoted remark, and stands at odds with your claim. Are you agnostic? Did you vote for John Kerry?

Why do you care if a tiny minority of religious people have harmless beliefs that differ from your own? If some misguided individual thinks the Earth is only 5000 years old (something very few people do, despite constant insults from atheists to the contrary,) how does that hurt you? Again, contrary to the left's standard line, nobody is lobbying Congress to impose that belief or any other non-islamic religious belief on the rest of us. Congress sure as hell IS being lobbied to impose atheist beliefs on the rest of us, and so is the Supreme Court.

The Catholic Church knew that Galileo was correct. They wanted to reveal the truth to the people slowly, so that their religious faith wouldn't be weakened after centuries of believing the Earth was the flat center of the universe. They probably wanted to share credit with him too, but that's beside the point. Galileo ignored their entreaty and pissed them off. The Church leadership at that time was very much interested in power, and could be very vindictive. Their persecution of Galileo had nothing to do with superstition. That's just another canard disseminated by the Christian haters on the left, and accepted without question or research by people who want to believe it.

Nobody believes that Christ is going to come to Earth in 50 years and save us. The people who believe in the "rapture" think he's going to abandon most people, and they don't know when. Again, their beliefs don't harm you in any way.

The Hindu caste system is completely ignored by the self professed, ethical giants on the atheist left, so you were better off not injecting it into the conversation.

CrypticLife:

If you say you aren't a leftist, I'm not going to call you a liar, but I will say that most people on the left think they're moderate when they clearly aren't. I obviously don't know if you fall into that category, as this is the first comment of yours I've read.

Atheists usually claim to be neutral on religion, but actually spend a great deal of time ridiculing it. Again, I don't know if you fall into this category.

I cant comment on you and your friends, but I'd be surprised if you could provide some examples of prominent atheists who aren't leftists and Christian bashers. Most of the tolerant and rational atheists are involved in the hard sciences.

The Amish aren't sexist because they believe men are the heads of family, and they aren't racist because they're all White. If you can give an example of Amish race theory that promotes the superiority of one race and the inferiority of others, you'll be the first.

The Nation of Islam is an example of a religion based on 100% on racism. Sure, it's a fake religion, but what the hell.

The atheist zealots on the left are the only ones who are as dangerous as the jihadis. More than one hundred million murdered by the Marxists in the last century.

I can't argue with you about zealotry, fundamentalism, or islam. I'm glad you woke up to the evils of islam. Don't take this the wrong way, but if it took the tower crumbling around your ears to question your beliefs about islam, you might want to take a closer look at your other beliefs as well. Introspection is a healthy thing.

Atheism is as much a ridiculous superstition as most religions. There is no such thing as a spontaneous event in nature, but most atheists believe that a big ball of condensed nothing spontaneously exploded and formed matter, energy, the physical laws of the universe and life itself. Not only that, but they believe it happened randomly--even the physical laws and life, which is believed to have evolved from inanimate, inorganic matter. They don't believe in any purpose or guidance to the universe despite the physical laws, but they have absolutely no evidence to the contrary. They believe that all the interdependent organs of the human body, and their specialized functions developed by other bodily systems, were able to achieve their desired results through random mutation. These beliefs are illogical.

It's all a matter of faith, friend.

I didn't mean anything against the Amish, Jeff -- quite the opposite, I was suggesting them as an example of fundamentalists who were not fundamentally evil. I admit saying they have sexist/racist views is based purely on impression, and could well be completely false. If so, it strengthens my point that fundamentalists are not per se evil. Even if they were, this irrational bias alone would not make them "fundamentally evil".

I do find Rushdie's statement is a very sloppy one, though. He's saying it is the fundamentalists themselves who are evil, rather than tying the evil specifically to their beliefs or actions. Mostly he's trying for a clever turn of phrase, so perhaps I shouldn't fault him too much. However, I think cute phrases often make for imprecise philosophy, and a phrase such as this that paints in such broad strokes is particularly suspect.

I disagree with most of your assertions about atheism, except about most tolerant and rational atheists being in the hard sciences (which I suspect is true). Since this isn't an atheist vs. believer thread, however, I'm otherwise going to ignore your comments on atheism and your statements/nonstatements about me personally. You'll notice I devoted 5 sentences to it, not 18 paragraphs, as I try to stay generally on topic.

I'm not sure why you say Islam (please clarify if you're making a distinction between "Nation of Islam" and "Islam", btw) is 100% based on racism. That isn't one of the criticisms I would have made of it, but perhaps you have a different perspective. Explain?

The main reason it took the tower crumbling around my ears was because before that I really had no opinion of Islam. It took the tower crumbling for me to look at it at all.

"Where are all these rational, truth-seeking atheists you refer to with your scientific, unbiased poll?"

Jeff dear, I didn't conduct a poll and did not say that I did. What I was asking was whether you had conducted one before throwing out these random statistics. I don't give you any statistics; all I can tell you is what I've observed.

You seem to have a pathological dislike for atheists. Perhaps your delicate and fragile religious feelings have been hurt by atheists one too many times, so you have reacted by tarring them all with the same brush. You speak very much like the most reactionary elements of the Religious Right, who try to convince us that Christianity is under attack from all sides in the Western world, not from Islamic extremists but from secularists, humanists, atheists, agnostics, liberals and various other assorted bogie-men. The excesses of political correctness are given a much more sinister intent than is justified, but it serves the purposes of the Rleigious Right well. They don't want pluralism; they want a Christian monopoly, and then only a twisted, miserable, ignorant version of that beautiful faith.

Quote: "The truth is, most atheists have no respect for religion at all, but they hypocritically demand that religious people respect their own faith. You're a PERFECT example of this mealy-mouthed contradiction."

How does that logically follow? I am not an atheist, as I've said. I am a Christian, as much as I know that infuriates you. Deal with it.

In the interests of comparing some passages in the Old Testament with passages in the Koran, and for the fun of making the venom-spewing literalist "Christians" even hotter under the collar, a resourceful Amazon book reviewer compiled the following:

[Joshua 6:23,21]Joshua said to the people of Israel, "The Lord has given you the city of the all silver, and gold, and vessels of brass and iron, are consecrated unto the Lord: They shall come into the treasury of the Lord.
The people utterly DESTROYED ALL THAT WAS IN THE CITY, BOTH MAN AND WOMAN,YOUNG AND OLD, AND OX AND SHEEP, AND ASS, WITH THE EDGE OF THE SWORD."

Deuteronomy 17:3-5 "And he should go and worship other gods and bow down to them or to the sun or the moon or all the army of the heavens, .....and you must stone such one with stones and such one must die."

Romans 1:20-32 ....32. "Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them."

Numbers 31: And the Lord said unto Moses, "Avenge the children of the Mid'-an'ites.. They warred against the Mid'-i-an'ites, as the Lord commanded Moses, and they slay all the males. And they took all women as captives, and their little ones, and took the spoil of all their cattle, and all their flocks, and all their goods. And they burnt all their cities wherein they dwelt, and all their goodly castles, with fire. Moses said, "HAVE YOU SAVED ALL THE WOMEN ALIVE? NOW KILL EVERY MALE AMONG THE LITTLE ONES, AND KILL EVERY WOMAN that has known a man by lying with him, but all the young girls who have not known a man by lying with him keep alive for yourselves."

It's always seemed peculiar to me how so many fundamentalist and/or Evangelical Christians (not all, I hasten to point out) seem to put much more stock in the Old Testament, and in the Book of Revelations, than in the Gospels which actually deal with the life and the teachings of Jesus Christ. What do they make of these passages, knowing that they are constantly setting up Islam and Christianity in diametrical opposition to one another? Claiming the moral high ground with this kind of literature to back you up doesn't seem to me to be the best strategy.

Nonetheless, I still believe we are together in this struggle. I believe it is better to do the right thing for the wrong reason than not to do it at all. So I'm glad that Evangelical Christians have long supported the continued existence of Israel, even though they've done it for stupid and self-serving reasons. I object to such people being labeled as "evil" just because they are fundamentalist. Actions speak louder than words, or beliefs. If I could have an audience with Salman Rushdie, whom I largely admire although I find his books frankly unreadable, I would call him on it. Not likely that's going to happen any time soon though...