Are they sure this person is from Labour?

[phykell]

Originally Posted by cleanbluesky

This paragraph carries an assumption that you know anything about the prevalence of people you are talking about. Several times you have criticised me for treating people as a large bloc, although now you feel free to comment on the attitude of hundreds of millions of people. It seems that you are not against prejudice, merely against any estimate that don't serve a prejudice you'd prefer to believe.

Wrong and here's my reasoning. I think it's a perfectly valid assumption that so many Muslims regard Islam as a religion of peace. I daresay hundreds of millions of Christians think the same about their religion too. Of course, if you'd care to find any significant number of Muslims who would claim their religion was not one of peace, I'd be *very* surprised indeed.

Originally Posted by cleanbluesky

I can see your point although I think the fact that you're willing to volunteer this information demonstrates exactly why I am more quiet about other religions - other people are usually willing to say it in my place and are already aware of it. I only speak when I have something to say and in the past I have spoken about the negative aspects of Christianity and Scientology (but what about all the good scientologists, surely we shouldn't hate Tom Cruise he was in Top Gun)

The fact is that your first entry into this thread was to remark on the fact the guy in question was a Muslim. You then stated further on that you were "anti-Islam" - that's quite a statement to make TBH and quite unfortunate because it colours any subsequent debate you contribute to with regards to any claim of being objective.

Originally Posted by cleanbluesky

The idea that extremism is the sophistic at best and serves only to direct deserved distaste away from a population that believe in a anti-social ideology. I hear no-one else use the 'extremism versus moderate' ideology to anything else. Is it okay to be just a little homophobic/racist etc. etc. are there grades of racist? "It's okay, he's a good racist..." "Yes, I called you a nigger, but you know... positive, it was positive..."

I imagine there are plenty of dyed-in-the-wool racists and homophobes out there who would draw the line well before bombing innocent men, women and children. The comparison you're making doesn't really stand up TBH.

Originally Posted by cleanbluesky

You'd have to look at the religion to know whether the religion was at fault. You need to look at the religion. I've said this several times, and it gets repetitively ignored because its harder to think really nice thoughts about Islam when most accepted interpretations involve killing homosexuals. How exactly does one excuse killing of homosexuals, when you are a liberal? You can't, so ignore it. Produce some contextless rhetoric about the idea that a tiny group of amorphous 'extremists' are responsible for all the bad things that anyone with half a brain are turned off by, and point the moral finger at anyone who is willing to point out the problem.

Shall I tell you what *you're* ignoring? The fact that religion can be *interpreted*. Put it this way, if Islam was so simple in its definition that its words could not be misinterpreted, they wouldn't need Islamic scholars. It's similar for the Christian religion - I'm sure the Malleus Maleficarum was written in reasonably good faith no matter how many - probably innocent - tens of thousands died as a result over the many years that followed.

I would suggest that you don't know enough about Islam to comprehensively condemn it and you certainly have no right to dismiss everybody else's opinion as blithely as you do. Some of us might just have more of an insight into Islam than you give us credit for.