Salam …

I appreciate your allowing rants and raves coming from Islamophobes at your blog, but I certainly do NOT appreciate your allowing them to insult the Holy Prophet, peace be upon him. For God’s sake, please delete all such comments from this post. Please just remember one thing: there can’t be any human rights without the rights of Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him.

Wassalam, Your brother in faith …

PS. Hell with you, all you Islamophobes!

Ability to convert adherents of other religions, and to resist conversion of its own adherents.

People who support the notion of giving back land to “the people who were there first” are, in general, lying through their teeth. No one gives up “their” land unless they’re absolutely forced to. Do you think ST is the sort of person who would agree with the lyrics to Midnight Oil’s “Beds are Burning?”

The time has come To say fair’s fair To pay the rent To pay our share The time has come A fact’s a fact It belongs to them Let’s give it back

Yeah, right.

Hmm, so in your eyes the good guys are not “the people with the more civilized society”, but rather “the people who were there first”. Interesting that you support the Zionist immigrants over the indigenous Palestinian population then…

To call shamanism a religion is ignorant.

I’ve read quite a lot on this topic I know what I’m talking about.

… There seems to be a hierarchy of religions - Islam is the strongest with other “Religions of the Book” one step down, and polytheistic faiths lower still

Monotheism is the original form of all religions prior to their being corrupted, i.e. prior to being “polytheisticised” [my vocabulary].

What makes a religion lower is its polytheistic lean; and it is also probably the one thing that makes it displaceable.

This means, there is really no weaker religion, rather, there are weakened religions: i.e Religions whose followers tend to have replaced “monotheism” with something lesser.

Come to think of it..even with monotheistic religions, the human being still has to deal with his technical and dualistic perception of the world, thereby stressing himself out and disturbing his ability to detect the wisdom behind phenomemal reality…

How much more polytheism, it can only get worse …

“Allah has not made for any man two hearts within him”

Anatolia on the eve of the Turkish conquest in the 11th century was thoroughly hellenized and Christian, it was more Armeninian in its western regions, but to say it was shamanistic which was the religion of the pre-Islamic Turks is just ignorant. Reading anything from Spiros Vryonis, or John Julian Norwich on the subject would put paid to your silly assertion.

“Muslims are just as morally justified castigating the Spaniards for destroying al-Andalus as Christians are in castigating the Turks for destroying the Byzantine Empire.”

Wrong, In Spain it was a reconquest of Christian land. The Muslim Turks were the aggressors as the Moors were when they crossed over into Europe in 711.

How are you defning strength?

Some would say that jews are stronger as a community because they are more ethincally/culturally monolithic.

They converted to Christianity most likely.

There seems to be a hierarchy of religions - Islam is the strongest with other “Religions of the Book” one step down, and polytheistic faiths lower still.

A stronger religion can displace a weaker one by conversion (voluntary or forced), while a weaker religion can only displace a stronger one by ethnic cleansing.

That may be why Muslims tend to get ethnically cleansed a lot ….. because nothing else works.

Yes, the early Turks were barbarians (in fact most of the “Mongol armies” were actually ethnically Turkish). But most of the barbaric actions of the Turks (like destroying agricultural infrastructure, for example) were duplicated by Christians at the opposite end of the Mediterranean.

Muslims are just as morally justified castigating the Spaniards for destroying al-Andalus as Christians are in castigating the Turks for destroying the Byzantine Empire.

In fact I suggest that the Ottoman empire eventually failed for the same reason that the Spanish empire eventually failed. Both were warrior societies who made their spurs against Byzantines and Andalusis respectively, but which went bankrupt as soon as they ran out of lands to plunder…