On Fri, Apr 02, 2004 at 10:04:03PM -0700, Trent Shipley wrote: > cannot be answered without more detailed information. Also, framing > the question an "either irreligious or very religious" is to put forth > a false dichotomy.
That would be your framing, not mine. I tend to think of religiousness as as an axis, with atheists and agnostics on one end and fundamentalists on the other, and lots in between. If you look at it like that, then my "very religious" was shorthand for "far to one side". > Nevertheless, the participanting population surely were in some > meaningful sense Muslim. Therefore, understanding the desecration > of corpses as an expression of hatred for Americans even at the cost > of disgracing oneself before God must be understood as a reasonable > interpretation of the recent events in Faluja. I still don't get it. One of the criteria I would put at the top of determinging position on the axis I mentioned above is whether god's (or allah's) law is the highest law for a person. Do you think these people would say that they follow allah's law above all others? In that case, how would they justify breaking it? Temporary insanity? The means justify the ends? Do Muslims have an equivalent of sin and forgiveness (confessional, etc.)? -- Erik Reuter http://www.erikreuter.net/ _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
