Fitzgerald: All right. Let's have that dialogue.

"Why not let them bring their prayer rugs, let them pray and let them enjoy the basketball game?"

Why not fit a basketball hoop in the mosque first and see how that works?

but where will the students perform wudu?

http://www.themuslimwoman.com/chooseyourpath/basicguidetoprayer/wudu.htm

"Half of all children are below average, and teachers can do only so much for them." - from this WSJ OpEd

Intelligence can be nurtured and strengthened, or ignored and weakened.

An intelligent and caring teacher quickly identifies the abilities and interests of his/her pupils and groups them accordingly. "Red Birds": above average; "Blue Birds": average; "Yellow Birds": morons.

By the end of their 1st grade school year, the Red Birds are ready for 3rd grade; the Blue Birds - second grade, and the Yellow Birds, who need to repeat 1st grade, get a pass to 2nd grade in order to protect their self-esteem. Most Yellow Birds grow up to be Democrats, education administrators and tenured leftist professors.

/teaching moment

"Why not let them bring their prayer rugs, let them pray and let them enjoy the basketball game?"

What utter rubbish. Let them stay at home, and pray, and not be "lost" in the outer world of games and play.

We already understand the muslim agenda. Why do these students think that we all need to learn from them?

Are they going to a Christian or Catholic church, a Hindu or Sikh temple, or a Buddist Center, to understand their faiths, their belifs? None of the students from these religions seem to be demanding anything.

What is wrong with this picture ? The more complaints, the worse they look in the eyes of the world, so I guess that is the awakening of understanding.

"The period of total ignorance and willful idiocy is over. It took a while, but it is over".-Hugh

That is so true. Even the recent US Air stunts and the CAIR deceptions afterward have made a powerful impression on ordinary people. Muslims have no regard for fact if it makes them look bad and manipulate events to make others look bad. Everything is deception with them. This "religion" is about subduing unbelievers, it has nothing to do with the golden rule. People get it-finally. Muslims would make everyplace as ugly and as intolerant as Saudi Arabia. "The period of total ignorance and willful idiocy is over". Islam is not about the universal practice of the Golden Rule.

freetoBefree: Some Muslims are indeed inquiring about other religions, especially Christianity. It's a quiet business for now, especially since some inquirers may be subject to death threats along with those willing to answer their inquiries; but it is happening and there is a loss from Islam.

Also, be sure that if in certain sub-Saharan countries there are numbers of ex-Muslims in various Evangelical churches, the MSM will not cover it.

Ah Kepha, there is still hope, thank GOD!

We are waking up, some of us are even 'smelling the coffee' but it's damn hard to get out of that 'warm bed of delusion'.

According to our government, although not directly listed in any formal document, isn't there such a thing called "seperation of mosque and state?" How come our schools, colleges and state public facilities are not allowed to pray, wear crosses, show the 10 commandments,mention God etc.etc. but muslims just march right in and demand that their religion requires special accomodations. Where are all those individuals who pushed for this so called "seperation"? Why are they now not pushing to have the muslim faith classed right in with all the other religions? Are they afraid to be called racisit?

All I can say, is that if Muslims GET the accommodations that they ask for, then it should be extended to all faiths. WITHOUT anyone being called a racisit. Example: As a christian I decide it is not within my faith to allow a fully burqued woman into my cab. It isn't because she's muslim, it's my faith that tells me to do this. Or perhaps, as a Jehovah Witness, I decide that Halal meat is offensive to my religion therefore my food chain will not allow it to be sold. Sorry Muslims, it's my religion.
Do you see where this is going?

I'd like freedom for all faiths or freedom for none. If you allow Muslims to set up prayer rooms in schools or stadiums then other religions have the same right to do so according to their faith.. THAT's called freedom of religion.

Hugh wrote:

Perhaps Ruediger Seesemann is unacquainted with the Establishment Clause or the constitutional history of that clause; if so, he might learn a bit before making pronouncements about this country, its laws, its customs, and a good deal else.

My sentiments excatly. I would be happy to explain those constitutional principles to that man.

Could someone please tell me what the phrase “ academic institutions have a responsibility to encourage spiritual formation.” means. I suspect that it has no meaning what so ever, it is a mere empty shell of nothing. Gobbledygook is a better description.
“The fact that it becomes a matter of debate is significant and points to the sensitivity of the issue." no my good friend it doesn't, the fact that you brought it up doesn't give it validity. It is time to use a bit of common sense and and say to these idiots go forth and multiply and if you can't do that F**k off.

"The phrase on Northwestern's seal is Quaecumque sunt vera -- in Latin, "Whatsoever things are true" from Philippians 4:8. Also on Northwestern's seal, a Greek phrase inscribed on the pages of an open book: ho logos pleres charitos kai aletheias, which translates as "The Word... full of grace and truth." This phrase comes from the Gospel of John (1:14): "And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we behold His glory, and the glory was of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." Both the Latin and Greek phrases express the values of the University's founders, and recall Northwestern's Methodist heritage."

Oh sadly, how far we have strayed....

I have seen enough Islamic on-line opinions to know that watching a sporting event is haram. This is another example of Mohammedans forcing us to submit to Islam in a backdoor sort of way. If Mohammedans regularly attend basketball games, then I guess they need to pray more than five times per day. This is no different from wanting a prayer room in a Las Vegas casino.

It is beginning to appear to me that we have as much of a chance of defeating jihad as Northwestern has of wining a national football championship.

Let me see if I got this straight.. no Nativity scenes and other dispalys for Christmas. MoFoe prayer rooms at basketball games - all of this right here in the Good ol' US of A?!

And we have a here a German [Ruediger Seesemann] head of Northwestern University?

Herr Seesemann - gehen Sie bitte nach Hause!
[Please go home]

The moslems don;t need international help to further their islamist agenda!

And moslems.. please follow Mr. Seesemann. You know the WAY OUT! Then pass Germany na dhead straight for the mideast yecchhhh!!!

MeanieMo, Hows this? Herr Seesemann - gehst du nach (zu)? Holle.

I can't do html umlauts.

"Does Ruediger Seesemann, does Amir Siddiqui, does Ahmed Rehab, really want Infidels to find out about Islam?"

Yes they do. They want Infidels to be reminded of the Other Islam, the holograph of a harmless reduplication of Islam that has been constructed by the West itself -- with the help of MESA Nostra, to be sure; but MESA Nostra did not create it, nor has MESA Nostra been the principal force in maintaining the ideological matrix -- PC Multiculturalism -- in which that Other Islam is the dominant version and by which any attempts at restoring the Actual Islam of history and the news is vilified as bigotry: this has been largely the doing of non-Muslims in the West over the past 60-odd years with roots going further back into the complex welter of the neo-Gnostic pathology that has infected the modern West and caused it to morbidly gnaw at its own self in self-hatred.

Muslims like the ones at Northwestern (and everywhere else they are pushing their sugarcoated Da'wa) merely want to make sure the Other Islam -- which the West itself has created and maintains -- remains propped up.

(Some of these Muslims -- perhaps out of paranoia, perhaps out of a typical kneejerk indoctrination in a caricature of the modern West as a dominantly anti-Islamic West (which is preposterous, as any beleaguered and marginalized Jihad Watcher will readily attest), perhaps simply out of the perennial Islamic voracity to not be satiated with small bites here and there but to keep pressing until Islam enjoys the complete domination Muslims were promised by Mohammed's Allah -- appear to be dim-witted, such that they don't realize the massive, dominant and mainstream support their Da'wa already has in the West: but their dim-wittedness is really irrelevant to our more pressing problem -- that we ourselves, our dominant mainstream sociopolitical culture, is, in fact aiding and abetting their project of Da'wa sugarcoating.)

Meaniemo, this might be more accurate "Scher dich zum Teufel!" or "Fahr zur Hölle!"

Pelayo,

One way to have umlauts (and any other accents you want) appear here is to first type it in Word, then copy-paste it in your post:

ü
ö
ë
é
è
ñ

—voilà!

Looks like you figured out a way already.

Pelayo

Gehen Sie is the formal, while gehst du is informal

you would use the formal over the informal due to the persons position and lack of formal introduction.

personally I would just say "Herr Professor Doktor! nach zu hause! mach schnell!"

Hugh said:
"Does Ruediger Seesemann, and do the Muslims in question at Northwestern, really wish to have the tenets of Islam held up for public inspection and critical scrutiny?"

The tenets of Islam speak for themselves so no, not unless they have experienced some sort of collective affective insanity. In its stead however, they will offer the usual disingenuine rhetoric, pointing out that regardless of what is written in the texts, and contrary to any normal cognitive reasoning, we simply misunderstand the texts themselves, and therefore Islam as a whole.

" neo-Gnostic pathology "

Are we back to this again.

What's neo-Gnostic? Does it mean modern Gnostic? Modern Gnosticist have no middle-men in communicating with the Creator.

Frankly, I'm a modern Gnostic - and I can tell you the information I get from my side is that that the moslems do - indeed - HATE us - and they HATE us for our freedom and liberties. ANd the islmaics do HATE us for our wealthy - of natural resources and what economy we have left.

That we, modern gnostics know. So I don't have any idea what "neo-Gnostic pathology " can be.

What is this only organized religions can post here?

I do advise we peoples of the West to start sticking very closely here and from now on. Let's not look down on each other. We can't afford that, eh?

You know "A house divided?"

Whilst we are all on the subject of being proud of our own culture and language etc. may I just remind everybody that English has a perfectly good word of its own for the German word 'umlaut' and that word happens to be 'diaeresis' sometimes spelled 'dieresis' (the plurals are 'diaereses' or 'diereses').

Is it too much to ask that we learn our own language as well as others or is that not a PC thing to ask?

Dominic.

Hugh,

The end of the beginning (?)

allat,

I was not familiar with the term neo-gnostic either.
After a bit of research, keeping in mind the context
used in remote_control's post, I settled on this as being the most likely explanation.

Perhaps, remote_control or others will return and enlighten us.

"In our capacity as political scientists, historians, or philosophers we all have had occasion at one time or another to engage in debate with ideologists . . . . And we have all discovered on such occasions that no agreement, or even an honest disagreement, could be reached, because the exchange of argument was disturbed by a profound difference of attitude with regard to all fundamental questions of human existence—with regard to the nature of man, to his place in the world, to his place in society and history, to his relation to God. Rational argument could not prevail because the partner to the discussion did not accept as binding for himself the matrix of reality in which all specific questions concerning our existence as human beings are ultimately rooted; he has overlaid the reality of existence with another mode of existence that Robert Musil has called the Second Reality. . . . [B]ehind the appearance of a rational debate there lurked the difference of two modes of existence, of existence in truth and existence in untruth. The universe of rational discourse collapses, we may say, when the common ground of existence in reality has disappeared.

. . . The speculations of classic and scholastic metaphysics are edifices of reason erected on the experiential basis of existence in truth; they are useless in a meeting with edifices of reason erected on a different experiential basis. Nevertheless, we cannot withdraw into these edifices and let the world go by, for in that case we would be remiss in our duty of “debate.” The “debate” has, therefore, to assume the forms of (1) a careful analysis of the noetic structure of existence and (2) an analysis of Second Realities with regard to both their constructs and the motivating structure of existence in untruth. “Debate” in this form is hardly a matter of reasoning (though it remains one of the Intellect), but rather of the analysis of existence preceding rational constructions; it is medical in character in that it has to diagnose the syndromes of untrue existence and by their noetic structure to initiate, if possible, a healing process."

“On Debate and Existence” by Eric Voegelin
Intercollegiate Review, 1967; Collected Works, Vol. 12

See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Voegelin

As a Northwestern grad, this story really gives me heart burn. I think it is time to start inundating the University with requests for special accommodations to Christians, Jews, Buddhists, and everyone else. Otherwise, the school is going to buckle on this. Universities are the birthplace of PC. If a business like Northwest Airlines is capable of caving so quickly (mere hours), then I am amazed that Northwestern University didn't do so instantly. If confronted with Christian accommodations, they will instinctively reject the Christian accommodations, and realize that they must, albeit reluctantly, reject the Muslim accommodations as well.

As an FYI, Northwestern was a Christian university at its founding. There is a Methodist theological institute that is still part of the campus. The founders will no doubt be rolling over in the graves sometime soon.

I feel sick . . .

allat,

My use of the term "Gnostic" (in the term Neo-Gnostic) is probably not the same which you employ. My use follows the analyses of people like Zahner, Heidegger, Voegelin, whereby the modern variant of Gnosticism shares certain features with the original ancient Gnosticism (hence the use of the same term). Among these features are, most importantly:

1) hatred of the Cosmos (which in modern times transmogrifies into a political attitude of hating all sociopolitical structures that serve to perpetuate a perpetual rapprochement with the imperfection of reality (= Creation, the Cosmos, etc.), instead of "purifying" society of this imperfection (Marx: "The purpose of philosophy is not to understand reality, but to change it.")

2) the sense of being a "prisoner" in the Cosmos, leading to two responses:

[ancient Gnosticism] a1) wanting to escape from the prison of the Cosmos

[modern Gnosticism] a2) wanting to transform the evil Cosmos through changing its sociopolitical structures (usually through violence of one form or another)

[ancient Gnosticism] b1) a feeling of being a special member of a small group of uniquely enlightened people who have been given the key to the meaning of life, with a consequent hatred of all outsiders to this group

[modern Gnosticism] b2) the feeling of being special remains, as does the possession of the key to the meaning of life, but the "in-group" expands to include anyone who can be converted to join the Revolution.

As I said above, I doubt you subscribe to these features as analyzed by certain modern thinkers to constitute Gnosticism in its ancient and modern variants. Anything can be named anything. Perhaps there is a New Agey sect out there (or many different ones) that calls itself "Gnostic", and you have found it to have a more appealing flavor than the 1,001 other offerings on the menu of the Comparative Religions Cafeteria which the modern West offers.

The more research one does about Islam, the more one seriously reads the Qu'ran and other Islamic sources, the more one finds out about CAIR and other muslim organizations, the less likely will one feel like having a dialogue with muslims. That's what happened to me. It started by accident. I ended up at islam-watch.com, which is run by Ali Sina, and through the links page I found Jihad Watch. I was always skeptical of the "Islam is a religion of peace" bulls*** but after reading Qu'ran verses calling for jihad against unbelievers, it made sense now in my mind that the ROP bulls*** was just that-bulls***. I believe good things can come out of bad things and this will lead some people to this site. And it looks like the likes of Robert Spencer et al are making progress because many Americans still do not look on Islam in a favorable light.

Thanks to Malinois for the Voegelin quote above.

By the way, readers of my adumbration of certain features of Gnosticism above will recognize another group out there who fits: Islam.

I maintain that Islam is not an example of "Neo-Gnosticism", but is, in fact, the only example of classical Gnosticism to have perdured in a culturally massive and politically powerful (waxing and waning, of course) form for centuries. In the West, classical or ancient Gnosticism had to go underground after Christian orthodoxy, with its masterly synthesis of Judeao-Christian and Graeco-Roman cultures, became dominant and mainstream. Wherever the underground strains of Gnosticism reared their ugly roots throughout the medieval period in the West, they tended to be suppressed as heresies (though some currents infiltrated into the mainstream here and there over time). On one level, certain of these currents flowed into the Protestant Reformation and its many-splendored, many-splintered aftermath, including the Enlightenment -- which, as Voegelin reminded us, was not all light -- as well as a more amorphous and turbid metastasis of ideas throughout the 19th century, from whose polluted waters Hitler drank to a considerable degree (Voegelin, for example, traced a thread from Jakob Boehme, medieval mystic fascinated with heterodox quasi-Gnostic currents, to Hitler).

Hugh said

Perhaps Ruediger Seesemann is unacquainted with the Establishment Clause or the constitutional history of that clause

According to Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971), the Supreme Court said that our government could not "excessively entangle" itself with religion, for example by funding it or promoting it. But my question is, is there anything stopping a foreign government from "excessively entangling" itself in religion here in the U.S.? From what I can see, a foreign government is free to entangle itself as much as it wants, funding the construction of places of worship, special interest lobbying groups, television channels (for those cable networks willing to show them), and "classroom teaching aids" to make sure that one religion, one specific religion, is promoted to our students. Could that possibly be what our Founding Fathers had in mind, when they restricted our own government from promoting our own religions, that foreign governments would be free to promote their religions here, with no restrictions and no accountability, and we couldn't do anything about it?

That seems like a problem.

Dialogue, in the Platonic sense, is impossible with Muslims. They insist that the Koran is the absolute word of Allah and they won't listen to reason.

I agree that we Infidels need to know this. Once we realize these people aren't up for dialogue, I think the gloves will come off and the Muslims will wish they'd actually wanted real dialogue.

OT, but it would be nice to get your comments on this:

http://sheikyermami.com/2007/01/21/love-letter-to-australia-from-a-turkish-migrant/

But Dominic, "umlaut" is an English world. I see it in Yourdictionary.com

http://www.yourdictionary.com/ahd/u/u0016700.html

Peace

okie-dokie, remote_control. I'm flexible.

Peace

"Perhaps there is a New Agey sect out there (or many different ones) that calls itself "Gnostic", and you have found it to have a more appealing flavor than the 1,001 other offerings on the menu of the Comparative Religions Cafeteria which the modern West offers."

Ha, ha, ha.
It's really not New Agey, but Older than Ancient Egypt - but never mind.

" In the West, classical or ancient Gnosticism had to go underground after Christian orthodoxy, with its masterly synthesis of Judeao-Christian and Graeco-Roman cultures, became dominant and mainstream. Wherever the underground strains of Gnosticism reared their ugly roots "

He, He, I belong to that Underground Stream.

And I stand by it. You'll not provoke. But I find it amusing. He, he,

Allat- the Heretic and Proud of it!

Could that possibly be what our Founding Fathers had in mind, when they restricted our own government from promoting our own religions, that foreign governments would be free to promote their religions here, with no restrictions and no accountability, and we couldn't do anything about it?

That seems like a problem.

Posted by: special_guest at January 20, 2007 11:00 PM
Why would our Founding Fathers leave a loophole like that? They wanted religious freedom for all, persecution for none. Of course, they never anticipated islam rearing its hideous head, one of their few oversights. They would have considered muslims hostile enemy invaders and islam a threat to the Constitution and the security of the nation. I really believe they would have banned islam, made it illegal, because they had enough sense to realize that the tenets of islam are incompatible with our Constitution. Their goal was a united, peaceful country, not a multicultural morass populated by competing minority and special interest groups motivated by identity politics.

I assume you are referring to Saudi ARabia as the foreign government that is promoting religion here with no accountability and no restrictions. Couldn't we say the same about Rome? In one sense, both wahabbi islam and Catholicism are promoted by foreign sources, the kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Vatican, but neither has an entirely free rein. The Vatican can't impose itself on secular public schools and technically, neither can the wahabbis. They can both build and fund private schools, which they do. I don't know to what extent the Vatican is financially involved in American Catholic churches, but there don't seem to be any limitations on the Saudis spreading their vile religion by building and staffing mosques. However, I don't think the founders deliberately left open an avenue for exploitation by the likes of the slimy saudis; they simply never anticipated the arrival of islam to this country. Just thirty years ago it was practically nonexistent here, and nobody forty or older ever dreamed that during their lifetimes millions of muslims would be practicing islam in America; that islam would wage a war against America and the West; and our country would be attacked by maniacal muslims. There are many other wild and crazy things we never expected and still can't believe, but I won't go into those.

The religion clause of our First Amendment is definitely a double edged sword. It was NEVER meant to protect, respect, or include islam but islam is considered a religion, despite the fact that muslims worship a bloodthirsty demon. Even if islam was declared a political ideology, I doubt if it could be banned. The Communist Party is alive and kicking and several other anti-American political parties are out there, although they have little influence. Our enemies are protected by the asinine laws enacted over the past three decades. I have yet to understand why an illegal alien is entitled to any Constitutional protections or rights, so I certainly cannot understand or explain why we now invite our avowed enemies to not only immigrate to America, but also allow them to exploit our laws, abuse our rights, and practice overt sedition before our eyes. It all beats the hell out of me.

Susanp, that is an interesting and thought-provoking post. I definitely was not thinking about the Vatican; I'd be inclined to focus on Islam for now, and when Roman Catholics start flying jetliners into skyscrapers (and driving SUV's over students relaxing on campus, and building a sniper nest inside the trunk of a car, and blowing up a bomb vest outside a college football game, etc.), and quoting the Bible to justify it, then we could start worrying about them too.

As you point out, Islam has core values that are inherently in conflict with the values of the Constitution. The values of Catholicism (and of Christianity in general, and Judaism) are the values of the Constitution; one derived indirectly, and in part, from the other. Islam includes ideas that are more political than they are religious; the Qur'an and hadiths are as much a guide for carrying out warfare and conquest as they are books of religious contemplation. I mean, what other religious book has a section dedicated to describing how to divide up stolen loot? How is it consistent with our Constitutional values to have thinly veneered Arab racial supremecy spewed into our nation with no limits or restrictions?

Islam brings up many interesting questions, like if Muslims eventually make up a majority, and they vote to overthrow the Constitution and replace it with sharia, could that be overturned by the Supreme Court as being unconstitutional itself? Can we vote ourselves into a violent intolerant theocracy? That's something else I doubt the Founding Fathers ever dreamt would come to pass.

"I really believe they would have banned islam, made it illegal, because they had enough sense to realize that the tenets of islam are incompatible with our Constitution."

Excuse me, but all this is tragic and yet, at the same time, funny.

They were - perhaps - wise sages - becuase the moment any law bans something, people flock to it - either to try it or just for rebellion. Like, banned books - I for one, - go straight to check 'em out. Like the Prohibition Era in the 1920s.

You see, banning something is dangerous also.

Hugh: Your comment "...favoring of relilgion, or of one religion by the government." I don't believe government gets into this since Northwestern is a private school. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Dominic, I finished my third and last year of German in high school and that was 1965. Since English has no letters with two dots, umlaut to me is more precise.

Remote, I discovered that thing about pasting a letter with dots when I copied those last phrases from an online English-Deutsch dictionary.

Guten Tag, y'all.

"Northwestern is a private school."
-- from a posting above

Is Northwestern a private and openly sectarian school? Is it the kind of school, that is, that might have some difficulty in obtaining Federal grant money because of its openly sectarian nature? If it isn't, and if it does receive all kinds of Federal money, this strikes me as sufficient state action as to make relevant or implicate the First Amendment. Recipients of Federal aid do have to meet certain standards -- such aid cannot be given for sectarian study, but may be used, for example, for the study of mathematics or geography at a church-connected school, and so on. The amount of Federal money that now goes to private colleges and universities is now such that the case for applying the First Amendment protections, and that includes the Establishment Clause, is not a hollow one.

Pelayo/

English has one remaining word with the two dots of the diaeresis, namely 'naïve'. Some magazines still use the diaeresis in certain words (notably, in the UK, The Economist) for example: 'reëlecting', 'reëncoding', 'coöperation' and 'coördination' but this is now considered fairly old fashioned and most people use a hyphen instead like: 're-encoding', 'co-operation', 'co-ordination' and 'co-operation'.

Certain names, like 'Chloë' still take the diaeresis as does the surname Brontë. So, it is not correct to say that there are no words in English that use this mark. It would be more correct to say that the mark is gradually dying out in English but its significance is still there, even if the mark itself is no longer used, in words such as those I gave as examples in the last paragraph.

Dominic.

I find it apalling that so much misinformation is peddled on this site in the name of giving the true picture of Islam or to make the case that Islam somehow teaches hate and war.

Our Prophet was a merchant until he was forty years old. He saw blatant abuse of slaves, women and the dispossessed and began to teach Islam, in the expectation that the ONE GOD will unite one and all. He established the names of the great ones of Israel in every Arab heart in a mere ten years, after facing sharp and increasingly murderous abuse by the pagan Arabs from pre-Islam.

Many of his friends and associates were brutally murdered. His enemies used to taunt him and hate him for he was saying the slave was equal to the Arab chieftain. His own uncle (Abu Lahab) told him shame on you for making a man from Quraysh (Prophet's tribe which was dominant in Mecca) equal to slave who can be killed with impunity and no blood money would be due to pay for his life. Shame on you for insulting the grand Arabs in your ancestory!

Who turned to help the Prophet? slaves, women the poor and the dispossessed. What did they get for supporting him? They got abuse, murder, stones, fires. Check out Quran Surah 85, which talks about Muslim slaves being roasted alive for entertainment at night for saying there is only One God, and so people would stop supporting our Prophet.

For thirty months there was a total barricade and an embargo agasint even giving food to the Muslims. This caused the starvation death of the other uncle of the Prophet, Abu Talib and his wife Khatija. Why do you not tell us the background of when the war fare began?

After thirteen years of abuse and murder, when our Prophet was fifty three years old and the abuse could not be tolerated any more, then and only then the first battle took place. The Muslims were scared to fight. They had two horses and a few swords among 313 Muslims against 1000 Arab knights fully equipped.

So, they had to be encourged to fight back. FIND OUT. In the entire ten year period less than 2700 people were killed on ALL SIDES. Moses had 3000 Jews executed for disobeying him, slaughtered in a mere three days (Exodus 32:27).

David killed his tens of thousands and Jesus is the Son of David and was the direct beneficiary of David's establishing Jerusalem over the killings of thousands. But who is the evil one again? The hypocracy is so powerful, that it makes one gag!!

Please, also know that our Prophet spared the man (Wahshi) who killed his other "good" uncle (Hamza) who came to his aid when no one would help him. When everyone called him a crazy nut, Hamza came to his support. When children used to run after the prophet throwing stones and garlanding him with animal intestines, this Hamza helped him. Why? because he taught all men are equal in the sight of God and only good works distinguishes one person from the other.

People forget that the Prophet never fought anyone but the arabs, of his own nation, his own tribe and family and those among the Jewish tribes who joined the pagan Arabs thinking they will surely win against this rag tag group of slaves and weaklings with this man who invokes the names of the Prophets and the One God but seems to have no chance to survive. Jews were living right in Medina in peace when our Prophet died at the age of sixty three.

Would Hitler spare his arch enemies? Our Prophet spared his arch enemy Abu Sufyaan. He spared the lives of all his enemies in Mecca who had blood on their hands. Even Moses or Jesus did not have their enemies lives at their mercy. Mercy was the way of Islam and it shall always be the way of Islam. However, Islam does not teach us to give the other cheek to the aggressors. If you do that then you strengthen aggression. We are REQUIRED TO FIGHT BACK.

I would like to present two quotes from the Quran which are accepted by all Muslims (Sahih Muslim and Sahih Bukhari has narrations of the life of the Prophet that many do not accept as true, as many enemies of the Prophet had joined the band of Muslims, who were making mischief from inside and creating bad stories about a good man).

Quran 2:190 says: "Fight those who fight against you, but do not attack them first. Allah does not love aggressors".

Quran 10:99 says: "If Allah willed it, all nations would be Muslims. Would you then use force?"

(This was in response to some such as Omar, the second Caliph and Khalid Bin Walid, who wanted to subdue the pagan tribes by force, even without their attacking Muslims. Some of the wars that took place after the Prophet did take place with some of these men in charge, who ignored the above verses, which is partially the basis of the Shia-Sunni divide).

The only good thing about your web site is this. It makes people believe we are evil joes and distorts Islam so much, that when people find the facts, they have a higher opinion of an average Muslim and of Islam.

In the end, I would like to close with this statement of fact. Islam controlled vast regions of the World in which many Christians, Hindus and Jews lived, thrived and survived over many centuries, their places of worship and their existence is the proof that they did "survive" Islam and it is "survivable". If Islam is indeed as evil as you try to show it, how do you explain millions of Christians and Jews living in almost every Muslim country? How do you explain that Hindus are still the majority in India, after it was ruled for a thousand years by Muslims?

I would love to hear some answers to my queries.