aleiqum salaam abubakar,
thank you for such a considered and polite post. i don't find your tone over harsh.
I find some of your objections to anti-Israel posts as totally over the top. this thread is an example
alestine: Is It the Jews' Promised Land?
this thread was closed, as you will see, because it was basically started from the premise that the jews' historic and ancestral link with the land of israel is somehow suspect and that basically it is all completely made up. this tendency to try and rewrite jewish history is one of the most unpleasant aspects of islamist anti-semitism. it isn't even worthy of comment, let alone refutation. it's just plain disgusting. the person who started the thread was not there to dialogue but to spout propaganda and i stand by everything i wrote there. if i was vehement it was because i felt in that case it was fully justified. if you have a problem with anything i wrote there i'd be happy to discuss it with you in the same measured and reasonable tone that you have taken here, because you are clearly not starting from the same viewpoint.
Your claim that everyone is unable to utter a single word of support for Israel in the UK, for fear of offending Muslims, is tosh.
well, i'll agree that this is perhaps somewhat over the top - put it down to a rhetorical flourish. of course it is certainly not the case in many places, but in some places, particularly left-wing, people who think of themselves as liberal intellectuals, like the media and the "chattering classes" circles, it certainly can be.
Of course many criticise Israel and much of it is valid, a large number of Jews here are ashamed of the high death rate of Palestinian and Lebonese Civilians at the hands of the IDF.
i will of course also concede that there are places, particularly in the jewish community, where any criticism of israel whatsoever, however mild, friendly, constructive or reasonable, is immediately condemned as somehow anti-semitic and this, similarly, is most unhelpful. but this is by no means true of everywhere, as with anti-israel sentiment. i guess what i am saying is that there are some places/discussions/environments (like student unions, for example - look at what's going on in leeds) where anything less than full, frank and wholehearted condemnation of israel and all its works, institutions, citizens and policies is construed to be somehow "backward". obviously, that's student unions for you. both "sides" of course bang on about how the whole environment is biased against them (look at the discussions about the bbc's middle east coverage for a start - surely if both sides are complaining it's unfair to them all the time they might actually be striking a reasonable balance?) what i really object to is how the most extreme opinions are those that dominate discussions, so it becomes a dialogue of the deaf. consequently, there are some people (like the aforementioned thread-starter) who you just can't talk to - so i don't talk to them. i don't enjoy wasting my time.
Personnally I am completely opposed to the Palestinian armed resistance as it has lost its way and is not fighting under our (Muslim) rules of Warfare.
i don't think it ever had its way right to start with. i would also suspect that there isn't an armed islamic group in the world, or ever has been since the time of muhammad, that stuck to the rules the way that it ought to. even the "battle of the trench" raises some serious problems for me, for all that i think muhammad was largely very poorly treated by the so-called jewish tribes of arabia.
I am afraid that some of your assertions here like not saying that the war on Iraq is a war on Islam and distancing ourselves from the non-Islamic actions of some Iraqis is completely without foundation.
I don't happen to believe that it is a War on Islam but has more to do with internal US Politics than anything else.
why is what i say "without foundation"? i'm a little bit confused seeing that the second statement appears to agree with my viewpoint as well.
if you'd like to take this discussion over to the "politics" forum, feel free.
b'shalom
bananabrain
