From: Paul Grant (shade999@optonline.net)
Date: Sun Jun 15 2003 - 02:06:10 MDT
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-extropians@extropy.org [mailto:owner-extropians@extropy.org]
On Behalf Of Spudboy100@aol.com
Sent: Saturday, June 14, 2003 1:12 PM
To: extropians@extropy.org
Subject: Re: The Iraq war was extropian? Re: [Iraq] The real reason for
the war
Shade opined:
<<First, thats one fundamentalist party leader (of which there
are many); Second, that are moderate "fundamentalist" party
leaders that don't agree with him and declared his jihad to
be wrong... Ergo my point that equating fundamentalism and an
American body count is not a valid 1-to-1 mapping...>>
1) Islam, by its nature is a fundamentalist religion. The closest thing
to progressive Islam, are the Sufi's who practice a kind of ecstatic
"Pentacostalist" dancing rituals.
> hardly. most practicing muslims are sunni; and sunni's are permitted
(encouraged and required) to read
and interpret the koran to the best of their abilities. And while
fatwah's are binding in the sense that they
represent the current consensus in regards to the correct interpretation
of a surrah or hadith, there are in fact
several schools of interpretation... each muslim has his or her own
preference for which school of thought most
closely parallels his or her particular interpretation of the
religion... And if that isn't progressive, than Christianity
and Judiasm are as much a fundamentalist religion as Islam is, and thus,
fundamentalism as you choose to define it
is pretty much irrelevant.
2) Before this administration came to power, the Islamists, who seem to
be in charge of things in Islam nowadays; have advocated attacks against
the United States. In fact, the war against the US is a war against US
ideas, and culture, because the Islamists view it as undermining the
faith of their people by corruption.
> Or it could be because the movement towards secularism (which is
endorsed by many a US-mideast puppet regime), has resulted in large
quantities of poor, uneducated people.
Remember, an informal condition for muslim-predominant states to be
friends of the US is that they suppress religious-based political
parties; that in and of itself
is a problem, since a particularly well-informed westerner pointed out,
that the koran is not only a faith, but a code of laws (Shuria). The US
is in effect, denying
muslim states the ability to follow their faith. This conflict between
the western ideal of separation of church and state as holy, and that of
predominantly muslim states
wanting to enact an Islamic government is one that must be addressed,
preferably by the US butting out, or even more simply, following the
spirit of a democracy.
The current example is the violence between Iranian students and the
vigilante's now attempting to break up demonstrations in Tehran, unto
this very hour. You can also view, if you care to, OSB's declaration of
war against "Crusaders and Jews" that was published on the web, in 1998.
Before that was the attacks on westerners by the Muslim Brotherhood in
Egypt, starting in the early 1960's, as a means of purifying the
perceived corruption of the Gamal Abdul Nasser regime, with its cozy
relationship with the Soviets, and Europeans.
>Well, as an Egyptian, I can tell you that the system is very much
corrupt, even unto this day.
And although I have left the faith a long time ago, I would very willing
support an islam-based
state. The code of laws is *that* fair, and certes, an improvement
over the current situation.
You may heave brickbats at America (those politicians sure do love dat
old debbil oil, and love to be advisors to the Wahabbi kingdom), but the
chief responsibility of how Muslims behave, lies within themselves.
Making the US jump through hoops to placate the Islamic (read Islamist)
world appears merely encourage more violent and intolerant behavior from
Islam. Remember the quote from Osama regarding how people like the
stronger horse?
>In short, leave the middle east. Stop meddling in their affairs. In
fact, I would suggest something as radical as wacking the CIA's budget
:)
That should keep you out of trouble :) Probably help out a lot of
non-muslim/mid-east countries too...
To get back to the Thread Topic, I am not sure everything should be
defined as Extropian or not. Was the Great Revolution of 1688 in
Britain, Extropian? How about the 1832 creation of the Third Republic in
France? Its not like apples and oranges, its like apples and LVAD's.
>Sorry for the divergence, I felt that there were alot of points that
needed to be addressed (or rather, challenged).
Finally, if no nerve gas or biotoxins can be found in Iraq, or found
that they have been sent to Syria (for example) then we have been
subjected to a Wag The Dog lie from Bush. I suspect that Bush is hiding
the fact that Syria took the stuff in question, as a means to cajole the
Syrians into joining the team. I could be wrong, but its just a hunch.
In this case, a lie is still a lie, even if its for a "good" reason. If
these allegations are proven true, Bush should no longer be given carte
blanche on foreign policy. Because if they lied, then every claim now
needs to be scrutinized, because if he's going to lie once, he's going
to lie again.
>Personally, I think he should be impeached and tried before a war
crimes tribunal,
preferably staffed by countries he's "helped" under his current foreign
policy..
omard-out
PS> I'm sorry I won't be able to respond if you feel a further need to
respond;
I will be traveling shortly, and my internet connectivity (or rather,
ability to respond)
will be very much non-existent. If you would like, I would be happy to
continue to answer
any questions you may have offlist, but the
answers/responses/conversation will be at
least a month in coming. Obviously feel free to discuss amongst
yourselves :)
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