Sarah wrote: >>Mike, whether I say 'Britain versus Germany', or 'Germany versus Britain' makes no difference regarding whether I believe Hitler or Churchill was responsible for the war.<< I see our point, but take issue with the reciprocity that you imply. Normally the entity in the subject position of such a sentence is the 'agent' of the action in the verb and the entity in the object position is the 'recipient' of the action. Perhaps you intended 'versus' to express two sides equally dedicated to the destruction of the other, in which case you could have chosen to place Islam in the recipient position, but you didn't. I find that significant, especially in the light of your other remarks.
>>Yes, I take your point about Ariel Sharon.<< Good, but can you explain (you are under no obligation to, of course) how Bush can regard this man as a 'man of peace' when it is patently obvious that he is a monster and a war criminal of long standing. Should the west be lining up to support his terrorist campaigns against the Palestine people and their terrorist actions? >>No, I didn't say the loss of civil liberties in America was no big deal. I think it's a very big deal, which is why I referred to it.<< OK, but you referred to it as almost an afterthought, or at least it sounded to me like a small price to pay for Bush's 'measured and justified' responses, >>Equally, I think the absence of civil liberties in Iraq is a very big deal.<< Me too. >>To say "Islam versus the West" is not racist, as Colin said. Islam is not a race. If I oppose aspects of Judaism, that doesn't make me an anti-Semite. If I deplore Christianity, I'm not anti-white or anti-West. Pulling out the race card doesn't advance the discussion.<< Agreed, and these are points to take up with Colin. I did not mention any of this stuff. >>I can't respect an ideology that suppresses women, where there are no gay rights, no rights for the mentally ill or the physically disabled, where menstruating women are regarded as filthy and irrational, where women can only report a rape if there are two male witnesses, where we can be beheaded for not covering our faces or stoned if our husbands think we committed adultery.<< Neither can I, but these remarks could refer to many other ideological groups. And it does not give the strong (The USA) the right to destroy the weak when they bite the hand that fed it the weapons that allowed it to terrorise its own people in the first place. And why is the west not dedicating itself to bringing down these repressive regimes where they exist, namely Saudi Arabia, to name just one country which carries out public executions and shares a lot of the beliefs you mention in this paragraph? >>Granted, there are individual Moslems who don't believe these things should happen, just as there are individual Christians who don't believe in the Virgin Birth. But Islam as practised by the overwhelming majority of countries in which it's the ruling ideology does not respect human rights at all.<< An absolutely astonishing remark; as condescending as anything I've ever read anywhere, on any topic. >>And it's important to remember that Islam is not the Arabs. I hope one day that the Arabs will rise up against this or any other religion, and then they'll have a chance of becoming a great people.<< The Arabs have been a great people for thousands of years. Without them there would be very little civilised in the modern world. They could be a great people again if they were not spending all their time being starved, bombed, denied their human rights, robbed of their land and being attacked by other 'great' religious orders. mike in barcelona
