QUOTE(bondiguy @ Sep 19 2006, 01:00 AM)
I have debated with myself over the past few days whether to post this or not as it might be mistaken for racism, but here goes;
A few days ago the Pope of the Roman Catholic church was delivering a speech in which he partially quoted some 14th century leader. To paraphrase it basically said in the founding days of Islam, Muslims would dpread the word of their religion through violence!
Now ever since 9/11, Bali Bombings etc Muslims in Australia and around the world have continued to claim that they follow a religion that teaches peace and understanding. So how did Muslims react to the Pope's misguided comments and defend the fact that they are not a violent religion? They burn an effigy of the pope, the torch several churches and kill an Italian nun. Ironic isn't it? This is on the back of worldwide violence that spread after a Danish newspaper printed cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed.
Muslims around the world do not want to be tarnished with the same brush because of a minority of extremists in their ranks, but they make it awfully hard for the rest of us to sympathise with their current standing of social outcasts in Western countries
I was discussing this yesterday too. I know it is only a small majority of Muslims who react in these kind of ways, but when you have close to a billion followers and only .5% are extremists to some degree, that's still 10,000,000 lunatics out there. I mean, that is the stupidest way to react to every little thing that "defies" your religion. I'm not defending the Pope, but what he said was taken a bit out of context. And then to react by affirming what he said. Are these people retarded??? So if a Muslim leader says Jesus was not the true Messiah, should I got blow up some mosques in my town? The way many Muslims around the world reacted to the Danish cartoon and now this is truly absurd to me. They just reaffirm what many people stereotype them as, maniacal extremists.
I would love to see in these peoples' minds to know what twisted logic is going on in there. That's why I hardly watch international news anymore, just story after story of people bringing the collective intelligence of the world down a few more rungs.