Kigaz Wrote:God=Allah.
Its more "Killing in the name of *insert religion here*"
Not quite.
I know you're Muslim and I am sure you're not a terrorist, so that's not what I am going to say here. But the Muslim Allah is NOT the Christian and Jewish God, at least not the way the Muslims who are in charge of the Muslim world see it.
Your religion's culture in the Mid East is best described as "medieval." Women are property of men, converting from Islam to Christianity can be punished by death in places, Jews had to flee most Muslim countries in fear of their lives and divested of all their assets, (I've met some of them,) Iran held a Holocaust denial convention and executed its porn stars and said there "are no gays in Iran," in some places theft is punished by hacking off the thief's hand, the region reacts viciously with threats to any public criticism of the prophet Muhammad, (prophet Muhammad cartoons,) and more terrorists are Muslim than from any other culture, etc etc etc. ALL of this is done in the name of Allah. This is not because Muslims are warped evil savages, it's because they are a medieval society. When Christians were a medieval society they did horrible things such as the Inquisition, Crusades, pogroms, and witch-hunts. Part of being a Christian is acknowledging this was bad, which is why Christianity for the most part has moved past that. Islam, as a whole has NOT. They defend their medieval lifestyle, (some liberal Muslims criticize it, but they are most definitely not on top right now,) and it'll be a while till that changes. With the oil money flowing freely, the Arab leaders see no reason to change anything -- they are rich and powerful, and change would mean they would be less so. The standard Arab political message is making a show of condemning the barbarities to pander to Western liberals while in reality doing everything to profit from them.
I have to wonder why Western liberals defend a society's "right to exist" which stands for literally EVERYTHING Western liberalism is against. Exercising most of the rights liberals hold dear carry the risk of DEATH in teh arab world, as was made abundantly clear during the recent Iran elections.
If you're gonna defend your religion, you have a right to do that, but everybody knows that a lot of bad stuff HAS been committed by Islam. For every Ted Kahzynsky or Tim McVeigh there are thousands of Khalid Sheikh Mohhameds. While it's fair to argue that not all Muslims are terrorists or bad people, trying to whitewash the bad elements within your religion and culture will NOT work. People are wary and distrustful, and there is without doubt cause for that. I personally was next to Ground 0 on 9/11, and I saw arabs on my campus try to blame that on America's foreign policy, so I personally am wary as well.