A NEW DARK AGE? Or the death throes of Islamism!

Don't blame the West

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/life/blame+West/4050815/story.html

The 'root causes' of Islamist terrorism do not lie in poverty or western imperialism, but an age old conflict between reason and revelation

So writes Robert Sibley, in Ottawa Citizen January 3, 2011
He concludes:
The challenge for Islamists, obviously, is whether they can achieve that transformation better through demographic domination over the next few decades or through violence.
The challenge for Westerners, perhaps not so obviously, is whether they will awaken in time from their multicultural slumbers to protect their cultural heritage and avoid, possibly, a new dark age.
Read more: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/life/blame+West/4050815/story.html#ixzz1A94WKLN5
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This is just part of a topic for debate.


Blair and Hitchens debate religion - BBC

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoSoCGu4Rqs&feature=player_embedded


It was a New Year debate in Canada which can be seen with other topics on http://www.intelligencesquared.com/home


There are about 8 U-tube parts to it to see it in full, but the last one featured the questions from the audience and the very last question from a female student was: “if you were in the other’s shoes, what would you agree on?”

Tony Blair answered that he agrees that the challenge for all religions is the need to look at the interpretations of their scriptures, not to try and live according to that time centuries ago when they were written, but bring them into the modern era when e.g. the equality of women is the accepted norm!

Hitchens on the other hand agreed that if there were no religions in the world, human beings would still not behave in a utopian way, (he blames most conflicts in the world to be due to ‘religion’,- the organized variety!) given the frailties of homo-sapiens,- while there are human spiritual needs to e.g. ‘thank God’ if something good happens and when we have ‘God-given’ talents like musical ones, which cannot be explained through science alone.

Both agreed that there is good and bad in organised religion, due to ‘exclusivity’ about ‘our God’ being better than anyone else’s. This is why Tony Blair’s Foundation tries to build bridges across all faiths.

IMHO,- Israel, being a country which has to cater to all its citizens, is the ideal incubator for producing the changes both within traditional Judaism and across the other faiths, particularly in the areas of gender equality for a start.

Secularly they are already doing so,- see the Katsav indictment

http://www.jta.org/news/article/2011/01/03/2742387/katsav-rape-conviction-hailed-as-watershed-moment

I believe that we are seeing the death throes of die-hard Islamism,- and of all fundamentalist religions,- succumbing by the middle of this century!

The AlQueda, Taliban, et al. in Iran, Pakistan, Somalia and everywhere else where they terrorise their fellow Muslims who may be of different Sects, let alone the minority Christians amongst them, I believe are individual males fighting to maintain their power over their own,- community, family, women!

These males are frightened of the individual freedoms prevalent in the West, particularly that of women. Gender equality is foreign to the Islamists,- no matter how much their women leaders may claim to the contrary. The proof lies in the fact that throughout the Arab world and among Islamic nations their archaic laws subjugate women.

That is also the problem for Hamas and Hitzbullah vis-a-vis Israel,- no matter how much they may claim that it is about Palestinian land and rights. The Jews are all too near to them, too much democracy and citizens enjoying too much freedom within sight of their own dominated followers of their fundamentalist brand of Islam.

If only the Islamic women would rise up against their own Islamists, perhaps the type of Islamic ‘take-over the world’ mentality of their males might disappear in time.

I don’t see it as a ‘dark ages’ reappearing,- most Westerners are too educated and aware, even the liberals among us in their ‘multicultural slumber’,- but continuing conflicts in the short term will continue.

The Islamic terrorist monster is fighting in its death-throes!
Humanism will triumph in the end over tribalism!

Happy New Year 2011.
MM