[LAF] LAF Digest, Vol 47, Issue 17

Tue Jan 27 19:17:51 UTC 2009

Fair points all,
 but where do you ID the liberal elements in Islam?
 To me they jmostly
become ex Muslims most of whom seem to be communist  at least the ones I know 
{ don't see any elements in Islam promoting women's rights for example)

I understand the US funds Islamic groups  and they need an enemy but you could say the same thing about the Muslim fun dies and the communists tat were who all seem to have become capitalists.   (
But for me a moderate Muslim is one who wears a smart suite . talks softly and gets invited to have tea and Biscuits with the Minister and like his Christian counterpart has real influence even with cynical atheists politicians 
So its more religion I am against than Islam in particular in fact in the context of the UK
I am more worried about the Catholic Church than Islam-  but if I lived in Iran,,,,,,,

Although I agree religion will always be with us( (I am going to die before any significant change)   that is no reason to compromise with it
The same is true of Capitalism  and authoritarian  in fact with the latter we have gone backward, 

 After the High point of the 60s reform there is now more racism
homophobia and misogyny around among young people so I claim the right to continue to tilt at this particular windmill evem if \I am not going to win
every practical improvement on the human condition is related to reducing religion even if it cannot be got rid of, every reform to date has been mostly opposed by the religious even if the bought into it afterwards
Anyway I dont expect this rant to change anybodys mind
Ed

Ed MacArthur   07981  900  563

www.eventsandissues.bravehost.com
see also
www.freewebs.com/bookevents
Conway Hall Sunday Concerts
www.conwayhallsundayconcerts.org.uk
www.freewebs.com/secularcivilrights

--- On Tue, 1/27/09, Steve ash <steveash_2001 at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

From: steve ash <steveash_2001 at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: Re: [LAF] LAF Digest, Vol 47, Issue 17
To: laf at lists.aktivix.org
Date: Tuesday, January 27, 2009, 5:43 PM

The Seattle idea sounds good, I hope to be able to get to Curry house again
Saturday so we can discuss more then.

My point about Islamophobia was twofold, firstly I think its wrong to confuse
political 'Islamism' (literally a form of fascism developed in WWII,
note specific spelling to distinguish it) or Arab mediaevalism with religious
Islam, which in its modern form is not dogmatic or repressive. It's like
attacking the C of E over Christian fundamentalism or the Conservative party
over the BNP. The danger in not doing that and conflating them is that you
empower the fundamentalists by acknowledging them as the 'true voice' of
Islam. Given that for all its faults religion will always be with us in one form
or another, and Islam is likely to be its dominant form in the Middle East for
generations to come, this creates a big political problem for global
libertarianism. Instead we should be siding with popular, liberal forms of Islam
and helping it to gradually evolve and become more secular, as well as
eliminating archaic Arab customs and Islamist distortions and
 their promoters. I think the article makes that much harder and thus helps
Islamist movement you can't take on an entire civilisation and hope to
'win'.

The other point is that given the American Military Industrial Complex /
Security State has always needed to invent enemies to justify itself and
maintain its power, as it did with 'Communism' in Latin America, and at
home, there is good reason to believe that they are now doing this with
'Islam' and funding anti American 'Islamist' groups to this end,
just as they did 'Communist' groups in Latin America and
'Leftist' terrorist groups in Europe. In fact Kissinger implies just
this in his 'unifying' rants on the 'War of Civilisations' in
the Middle East. To side in with such a pro American agenda in the name of an
ill thought out Humanism seems counter productive to me. The aim of people like
Kissinger is not to remove the negative aspects of religion, after all they
mostly support Zionism, but rather to secularise the Middle East in a way that
makes its exploitable as another purely Capitalist zone.       

Steve

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