Holy Shiite!
A lot has been in the news recently about the Danish cartoons depicting Muhammad. I have seen the cartoons and have to say they are pretty tame. One I saw has a turban in the shape of a bomb, the other one has two women standing on either side of the prophet in full burkahs with only their eyes showing through and a black bar mimicing the eye holes of the burkah covering Muhammad’s eyes.
Before I go any further, let me say I have a deep respect for all religions. I don’t consider myself any specific religion, but if I have to choose, I choose to be Buddhist. I have studied many of the world’s religions, and I have a spiritual connection with the earth, and feel since we all come from the earth, it is our most sacred object.
The first cartoon demonstrated how the majority of the Muslim extremists view how the world is theirs to take by violence. How violence dopminates the landscape fo their homelands and is the ultimate answer to any delima they encounter. The second illustrates the repression of the females in Muslim culture. How many of these extremists view women as objects or property. (Some say much like slavery.)
Now these certainly not the fecal smeared versions of the Virgin Mary and Jesus from a few years ago. but it is a pretty strong indictment of the situation in many Muslim countries.
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/offices/comm/csj/991008/madonna.html
What I draw from the reaction of the many Musilms around the world to these CARTOONS, is that they are exactly what Muslims are portraying. The violence exacted on emabssies, the director killed a few weeks ago (Theo Van Gogh), and others including Soloman Rushdie, continue to protray Islam as a violent, repressive and misguided religion. I know this is not true.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3974179.stm
The originations of Islam started back a few hundred years after Jesus died. Muhammad saw the deriliction to God in the actions of early Christians (and Jews) and began hearing voices telling him the right path to salvation. So in all reality, all the three major religions have the same god, but different ways to hold reverence to him.
Think about it for a few seconds.
That’s right, you all worship the same god, but in different ways. If more Muslims, Jews and Christians knew this, there could be more harmony in the world. But because of freewill endowed by our maker, and the need for scapegoats in cultures, each extremist Mullah, Priest, and Rabbi look to the other religions as their source of grief. But each of these religions teach their followers to love their fellow man.
Christians started in the 1000’s to go back to the Middle East (before it was called that) and conquer the "Holy Land" and fight tooth and nail for relics and property that was virtually valuless sand. God doesn’t appear in these places more than anywhere else. It was all for the vainglorious egotism of Pope Urban II who issued a decree that anyone who fought in the Crusades would be pardoned of all their sins and would go to heaven. This began a "colonizing" of the Middle Eastern states that is still carried in mental scars of the inhabitants.
This colonizing has stretched through to the 1960’s and inthe minds of some Arabs, today with the American invasion of Iraq. Is is any wonder that they don’t like us? they have been through over 900 years of oppression and masterhood of white men who claim superiority. But we have to bring democracy to the Middle East according to the president. The way to do that is to allow free and open elections.
Look what has happened to Hammas. Free and open elections put a group that is considered a terrorist organization into power. It just goes to show, not everyone wants to be free. I heard a news bite that one Palestinian said, "They shed their blood for us, now we give them the power."
Sounds kinda like something that happened 230 years ago on the North American contenent. Some guys were pissed at the way things were being ran and began using terrorist tacticts to make their point. One of the proudest moments of our history is the Boston Tea Party. There were alos public revolts in Boston square.
I am not condoning violence. I served in the Army for eight years, I would gladly lay my life down for my freedoms and your freedoms still. But there is no way we to fight a "war" for others who don’t want those freedoms we hold dear.
