news…

news…

We believe that men and women are equals, but in the Muslim culture they are not, and they believe that this is the way God set things up. They will never accept that way of thinking or us trying to establish secular governments that take the place of religious law.

The current administration’s core group of supporters has consistently hammered the message that this government is Judeo-Christian in nature following the precepts enshrined in the Ten Commandments. Do you really think the Muslim world ignores this message?

Others may choose to believe that the reason we face hostile Islamic fundamentalism is that they ‘hate our freedom’, but I would rather soberly face the facts.

This author does not require me to defend him, but I take strong exception to the criticism that he is engaging in ‘chronic relativism equivalency’. Impressive sounding criticisms look foolish when misapplied. Mr. Khindaria asserted a perceived linkage of core beliefs that drive both societies and their worldview. He did not say that one was better or that they are even the same.

The current administration’s core group of supporters has consistently hammered the message that this government is Judeo-Christian in nature following the precepts enshrined in the Ten Commandments. Do you really think the Muslim world ignores this message?

Others may choose to believe that the reason we face hostile Islamic fundamentalism is that they ‘hate our freedom’, but I would rather soberly face the facts.

I’ll suggest one reason force no longer seems to work to make colonized people change their ways of life. The force required boils down to cultural destruction if not genocide. The world, or the weight of worldwide public opinion, usually applies pressure to stop genocide; sometimes that pressure is light, sometimes intense.

Ideology, clashing worldviews and irrational beliefs seem to be driving this confrontation. Nothing good can come of going further down such a path of willful incomprehension and absence of dialogue.

I am sorry, but they are not relatively equivilant ways of governing. I am not even going to go into the obvious differences.

Statements like

“Perhaps, they also want to evangelize their Shiite beliefs abroad but that is not yet clear.”

are falsely vague, to provide more weight to the writer’s suppositions. There is nothing unclear about their desires,as they have openly stated them on numerous occasions.

Statements like:

Iran’s leaders disdain these American precepts, which go back a few centuries while their own ways go back over a millennium.

and

Yet, Washington is bent upon changing how Iranians live. The White House has branded as “evil� the government of a 3,500-year-old people.

are banal, at best. Perhaps we need to go back to the old caste system in India, as it is very old, too. The feudal system in Europe lasted a long time, so it must be better too. And of course we need think about restoring the Pharoes and Roman Emporers while we are at it.

Rubbish is what I say to the underlying conceits of Mr. Khindaria. Government and politics based on the concepts of the Enlightment (which pre-dates the US, but is the basis of the concept of the people ruling the country, not religious leaders or Kings) is absolutly a more modern, and better, form of government.

I cannot believe you would actually advocate that because Shiite religous rule has been around 3500 years it should be allowed to remain.

Again, rubbish.