Kiss and make up? Unlikely...

The thing is, the religion is ok and all. But, as with most stuff like this, it's the crap way in which people interpret it that causes all the problems. And yes, serious shit happens that I cannot condone, especially to women. But at the end of the day it's the individuals/specific society that is to blame and not the religion.

It's too easy to rag on the Muslim faith for apparently demeaning women. Nikney, do you think that the Western world is any less demeaning with its pornography and blatant exploitation of women? A Muslim may think the Western world is far more discriminatory due to its obsession with women as sexual playthings. There are elements of all faiths and cultures that I find abhorrent. I'd just choose to express my views in a different manner to Gene Simmons and not make myself look like an uneducated cock in the process.

Yours,

Unemployed Working-Class Antihero.xx


Go on, disagree with me, clueless middle class tossers...

what a rubbish comment. sweeping generalisations like this proove how narrow-minded and reactionary mainstream American culture has become. i'd say US treatment of muslims is far more vile than the entire Muslim faith. why does everything have to be 'good' or 'evil'. the real world (ie. that outside of Ameirca and the bible) isn't that simple. Ironically, George Bush and his administration, who GS probably voted for, are the most vile entity on the planet themselves.

voltaire lover!

Browse on Google and type in 'fiji eating disorders'. It's all about the rise of eating disorders within Fijian persons, majoritorially female, when Yank TV came in. There's one example of how the portrayal of women does actually demean many women by providing unreachable stereotypes. Spend nay amount of time browsing through American TV channels and you will get the same thing, this wonderful imagery. This year you've had the furore of Janet Jackson, how she's been held up as some kind of fucking witch who needs to be dunked whilst you're allowed to have Britney peddling her sorry ass everywhere. It presents the idea that sex designed to appeal to men is fine but anything where the woman is given a bit of power is bad. Go and check out your average Bollywood film, if you can tell me that those films are as degrading to women as the average piece of Hollywod action hero bullshit then you're a braver man than I am. There's been way too much of this attitude that the Muslim faith automatically means 'hey chicks, become second class'. It is all relative to the society you belong in. We may look at them and say that the females are treated unfairly: they can look at us and say that our culture is wrong as to how we treat people.

And Muslim women are not forced to cover. If you'd observed any of the news features on the French decision to ban hardscarves in school, many Muslim women were in favour of repelling the French decision and wanted to wear the clothing. Imagine that.. free choice.

you read too much of shitty tabloids.

ah no! undereducated idiotic foreigners are going to steal our jobs.
they are going to bring all their organised criminals into the perfect-no-organised crime uk (ahem ahem)

apparently the polish are really clever. people in the uk need a kick in the backside, before we as a nation have a warped view of the world (as most americans do), the tabloids need to grow up and stop writing so much crap and creating miseducated people.

Wutever..I wonder if you've ever seen the propaganda the Nazi's fed to their population to incite anti-semitism... the films made where the SS dressed up in jewish costumes and abused/tortured jews dressed as germans... Suffice to say that there is practically nothing you read which hasn't been twisted by someone's self interests. The first casualty of war is the truth. Experience, not blanket cynicism, tells me our governments reek of dirt and dishonour. When I was little I used to think that world war 2 was entirely honourable, but as more secrets became de-classified I've found out that every single war there's ever been serves to smear every one of us in shit and guilt... there are no good guys and no bad guys... the fact that people are fighting and killing is failure.

Every religion has, at it's core, decent sentiments, but religion is always perverted to fit in with local traditions and prejudices. It doesn't say in the Koran that you should beat the shit out of your wife when she refuses to have sex with you or removes her burqa on a boiling hot day, but neither does it say in the Bible that you're allowed to lynch black people and put jews in gas ovens, or say in the Torah that it's ok to shoot schoolchildren for throwing stones at your troops. Our secular democracies... what do we worship?... things like freedom, tolerance, representative democracy... but we're responsible for more evils against innocents than all the religions put together. These days it's the US of A that fights to hold on to an empire which is threatened by insurgents, in the last century it was us europeans doing just the same when we had empires.

Get informed. Get smart. Believe nothing at face value.

the religious books you descibed may not say those particular things straightout. but religious books are extremely ambigous so can be interpreted in many different ways. Also they constantly contradict themselves, or so im lead to believe.
'its symbolic of...'
'that is a metaphor for...'
they mean whatever the individual person wants them to mean.

oooo.....super sleuth ....watch out!!

*also aplauds

Are we really that surprised that a Jewish person said "They want to come and live right where you live and they think that you're evil"? For Simmons to believe this is the same as for every child taught in a school in the Middle East to believe that the western world is evil and wants to suppress the Muslim culture.

Reading all these comments, i get the feeling that, as is common in britain, the majority of people here are atheists.

I think the Smileadelic point that Adie reposted is the one i agree with most.

I'd take it slightly further, and say that the "extremism of all forms is bad" line that a lot of people seem to take isnt the soft-liberal moral-highground option everyone seems to think it is. By suggesting "extreme" religiousity is wrong, you're suggesting that everyone else should effectively be an atheist. Or, worse, part of some pseudo-religious, do-gooder believe-nothing secular social club. I really don't want to see a world where everyone's an Anglican.

We'd end up with a society where things are less black and white, still less a thousand shades of grey. And more one shade of beige.

Like Janine on Eastenders?
Man, she be a killerbitch.

you know there was all that 'horraying' by american investors when Bush said 300,000 new jobs had been created.
i would bet that more than 3/4 of those were govermental jobs. indeed this isnt bad for the economy but it is not the same as 300,000 being created in a particular industry to boost that part of the economy.
also i would bet that the jobs created weren't needed and were just created so The Bush administration could say 'look new jobs! we are doing well USA! USA! USA!'

but the worst thing is that i think George Bush is going to be the first president since the 1920's (trueman i think but possibly hoover) to leave the white house with more people unemployed than when he came in. yet most americans dont seem to realise that.

obviously they will say 'ah but its the economic cycle, nothing we can do about it' or he might even plug in september the 11th, 'since 9/11 we have been in decline/depression, massive attrocity... we will have justice by killing anyone in our way... blahblahblah'