Text 7463, 157 rader
Skriven 2007-11-03 10:45:15 av Michiel van der Vlist (2:280/5555)
     Kommentar till en text av Robert Bashe (2:2448/44)
Ärende: Al Qaeda set fires
==========================
Hello Robert,

On Saturday November 03 2007 08:34, you wrote to me:

 RB>>> But if you believe that only the "old original" is the "real"
 RB>>> religion - and there appear to be a lot of muslims in the middle
 RB>>> east and elsewhere who take this attitude

 MV>> Are you sure about that? How reliable are the statistics. Sure, the
 MV>> fundamantalists get a lot of publicity, but how many are there
 MV>> really?

 RB> When you see the mobs attacking western institutions because of a few
 RB> cartoons,

I see similar pictures of mobs of hooligans making havoc in the city of
Amsterdam after a football match because of a lost game. Does that mean a lot
of people in The Netherlands are extremists?

 RB> hear about the religious police in Saudi Arabia and the revolutionary
 RB> guards in Iran, when you read about riots because a mild version of
 RB> Playboy is to be published in Indonesia - who needs statistics?

I do. It is very easy to make a shot of a group of people and make it look like
half the country is involved.

 MV>> Funny that just a few days ago, it came into the news that The
 MV>> Netherlands housed about half a million less muslims than what was
 MV>> assumed until recently. Until recentky it was assumed that all
 MV>> refugees coming from "muslim contries" are muslim. But that
 MV>> assumption was proven totally false. Many of them are not muslims.

 RB> Depends on what you call a "muslim country". Lebanon would be a good
 RB> example for a religious mix.

The point is that the figures had to be readjusted because of wrong
assumptions.

 RB> But I would think most of the "muslim countries" in the case of the NL
 RB> would be from places like Indonesia, where there were earlier
 RB> colonies.

Many Indonesian people came to the Netherlands in the late forties when it went
independent. But after that the flow stopped. I do not think many of them were
muslims. No mosques were build here until the influx of people from Marocco and
Turkey really got started in the late sixties.

 RB> And I'd like to know where the "other religions" come from in that
 RB> case.

What "other religions". Why assume any religion at all?

 MV>> Not any more no. But it was not really all that long ago that
 MV>> Christian fundamantalists propagated spreading the word with the
 MV>> sword. There is no big difference except that the Christians are
 MV>> ahead in the timeline. Well, they started 700 years earlier....

 RB> Which for my way of thinking is quite a while ago... as a matter of
 RB> fact around the time the muslims were fighting crusades to forcibly
 RB> impose _their_ religion on the middle east and into the Balkans and
 RB> Spain.

Yes, lots of fights have been fought over religion. And I do not believe for a
minute the Christian fundamentalists here in The Netherlands would not try to
impose their faith on others by force if they thought they'd get away with it.

 RB> A religious group doesn't (necessarily) imply a geographical location,
 RB> as you should be aware. And I'm reasonably sure you've heard of the
 RB> jewish "diaspora".

I would not call it a "world" then.

 MV>> The Christians can no longer afford to fight among themselves. There
 MV>> are not enough of them left, they have no choice but to join forces.

 RB> Not enough of them left?

Churches are being torn down or used for other purposes. For lack of believers
to finance them.

 RB> Michiel, they presently rule the world

Not my world.

Just because the US president is a christian, the christians do not rule the
world.

 RB> - and things will stay that way at least until the Chinese catch up to
 RB> the Americans in influence, economic and military power. Don't count
 RB> on that happening tomorrow.

What I see is that religion plays an ever smaller row in daily life for more
and more people.

 MV>>>> Not everyone living in Turkey is a muslim.

 RB>>> According to Wikepedia:
 RB>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Turkey
 RB>>> the figure is 99.0%. Mostly sunni muslims.

 MV>> And in Iran there are no homosexuals.

 RB> None that dare go public at any rate,

And maybe the same goes for the heathens in Turkey. They do not show in the
statistics, they are tallied as Muslim, just as the homosexuals in Iran show up
as heterosexual.

 RB> the same as in Saudi Arabia. Is that something new?

Of course not. But it should make you raise some eyebrows when the statstics
claim that 99.8% of the population in Turkey is Muslim.

 MV>> I do not believe that either. Wikipedia is not a very reliable
 MV>> source of information.

 RB> But in this case presumably pretty accurate.

99.8%? Oh c'mon, that figure is way too high to be credible. Like Saddam
Houssein was voted into office by 99% of the Iraqi population.

 RB> If you don't believe it, go to Turkey and try to build a church.

Try to build a church here in The Netherlands... The building regulations will
kill you. ;-)

 MV>> In theory. Just as The Netherlands is secular in theory. But as
 MV>> long as church bells can legally keep me out of my sleep on Sunday
 MV>> Morning and the local brass band can not, secularism is theory.

 RB> What does that have to do with secularity? Secularity means that
 RB> religion doesn't stand above the law and may have no direct influence
 RB> on politics.

But obviously it does. The church is allowed to make more noise than others.

 RB> That being said, I also live one house away from a church that rings
 RB> it's bells LOUDLY at every available excuse, and that meanwhile drives
 RB> me up the wall.

And they get away with it. Would you get away with doing the same?

 RB> But the fact remains, the law permits that.

And so there are double standards. One for the church and one for brass bands.

 RB> Although I often wonder why there is no mineret on the mosque here in
 RB> Datteln, where the muezzin can use a loudspeaker to call the faithful
 RB> to prayer three times a day...

I have been asking myself the same question.


Cheers, Michiel

--- GoldED+/W32-MINGW 1.1.5-b20070503
 * Origin: http://www.vlist.org (2:280/5555)