WIP

Yes it's all Obama's fault! George Bush never existed! Democrats have run the Whitehouse from Clinton to Obama without interruption, and the still growing U.S. economic disaster has nothing to do with Republican policies of banking deregulation and permanent deficit-spending!

This is the problem with faith-based politics! Republicans are lining up again to voice their support for Sarah once again, and it doesn't matter what stupid things she says or does, they will have some excuse for her.............at least until she falls off the political landscape, and is no longer seen as a viable Republican candidate for 2012.

I doubt it will ever sink in, since you've been told a number of times before by many different people that atheism is not a belief system, but instead an expression of disbelief in gods and supernatural entities. Now how an atheist treats others (which I'm assuming is the point of this paragraph) depends on their character and what principles they believe in and act by -- so we would have to know if we are talking about humanists, Marxists, Ayn Rand Objectivists, existential nihilists etc. before we can guess how they will act.

Could you elaborate on this point? So far you haven't explained what you mean by religion, or how it can be connected with so many bad things and yet not be the cause of them. Religion is usually understood to be a system of metaphysical doctrines combined with a list of ethical rules. Both are usually presented as the results of divine revelation. The instant knowledge presented in sacred texts is the exact opposite path to knowledge as the gradual buildup of knowledge and understanding of our world. Science and religion are not compatible, regardless of occasional blathering by theologians and a few scientists. One side has to give way. Usually the religious authorities have to reinterpret their story when empirical evidence mounts up too high to continue literalist interpretations. And where did the hatred and fear come from? In places where you have a homogeneous population, there have been bloody sectarian wars fought over which religious sect the people should adhere to. It's not hard to figure out the source of the conflict when two warring sides are divided by religions that claim exclusive rights to the hereafter. And if you're referring to the same book I'm thinking of, the good things to preach are found through careful, deliberate cherrypicking of verses to support modern standards of good behaviour that were not shared by Christians living two thousand years ago. For centuries the Catholic Church suppressed most schisms through inquisitions and heresy trials; but after fighting long, bloody wars against the followers of Luther and Calvin, a ceasefire was agreed upon. But that was not the beginning of separation of church and state. In Europe, there is de facto separation of church and state because the churches have lost their influence over the majority of people. But most nations in Europe still have official, state supported churches. That doesn't make a lot of sense, since a church is just a group of organized Christians. Maybe a definition of "spiritual" would be helpful. How are spiritual problems solved? Does acknowledging this higher power solve these spiritual problems when there is no way to prove that this higher power exists anywhere outside of the imagination? I have no problem with people believing in things they can't prove exist, unless they feel they should determine real life public policies that affect everybody. As I explained previously, the church I support is organized around shared principles, not the insistence that everyone believe the same dogma. I have been in churches during my life where I thought "this place would be great if it wasn't for all of the stupid things they expect everybody to believe without question!" The Unitarians tend to attract a lot of mystical, new age type flakes -- but as long as I don't have to believe the stuff that Eckard Tolle and other new age mystics write, I have no problem with it. I mentioned the U/U's because I believe the problem with religion is exactly the opposite of what you claimed to be the problem. You claim religious faith and the basic Christian dogma are good, and the problems associated with religion are caused by the churches that are organized around these beliefs. I see the problem as having beliefs based on faith, that cannot be challenged, scrutinized or easily altered. So a church that organizes around a sensible set of principles can be a fine place. Which helps nothing, since the world's population is already too large to be sustained for long at the rate we are using nonrenewable resources and fresh water. Aside from the increasing amount of natural resources each of us use in the modern world, lets take a brief look back a couple of centuries to see how fast human population has grown: It took over 100,000 years for modern humans to reach the 1 billion mark in 1804, and then......... 2 billion in 1927 (123 years later) 3 billion in 1960 (33 years) 4 billion in 1974 (13 years) 5 billion in 1987 (12 years) 6 billion in 1999 (12 years) 7 billion in 2013 (14 years - projected) 8 billion in 2028 (15 years - projected) Back when I was young, the world's population was a little over three billion, and we heard as much about the threat of overpopulation as we do about global warming today. I have wondered why this issue gets little traction in the mainstream media today as we get near the 7 billion mark, since overpopulation impacts on all of the other environmental issues -- but I hadn't realized what a concerted effort the Catholic Church has made over the last 30 years to take this issue off the table until I read these articles a couple of weeks ago. If you think overpopulation is a red herring, you are only fooling yourself. This is THE most important issue that is the number one threat to our survival as a species.

All true, and if you're old enough, you can remember a time when nothing was done about spousal abuse even from other family members. I had an aunt who, along with their children, were constantly physically and verbally abused by my uncle, and yet my father refused to offer his own sister any support or help when she tried to seek a legal separation and take her two youngest children with her to safety. Thirty or forty years ago, a man's home was his castle, and the man was the head of the house according to Christian principles -- so my father's reasoning was that it was improper to interfere regardless of how unfortunate the situation was (then again, my father was also abusive on a somewhat less egregious scale) Anyway, we don't do Muslim immigrants any favours here by stroking fragile egos and assuring them that we respect their culture enough to look the other way and tell them how wonderful the religion of peace is. It is up to them to confront the realities of this violence and deal with whatever contributions by religion and culture are made. Fortunately, there are some voices in the Muslim communities who are pragmatic enough to realize they have to address the problem and deal with it. This is a problem they are going to have to deal with, and we shouldn't be playing cultural relativism to dismiss the problem. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/wajahat-ali/...a_b_168211.html

The default claim that religion is a good thing (other than the wars, genocides, pogroms, persecutions, forced conversions, and objections to modernity) doesn't pass the smell test when an impartial analysis of history is performed. The French playwright Voltaire narrowly escaped being burned at the stake for writing a book that theorized Christendom caused the fall of the Roman Empire; but whether the new religion which Emperor Constantine picked to try to keep his empire afloat was the cause of the Fall of the Roman Empire, it nonetheless hastened the decline and made the quality of life much worse by burning books of science and medicine, closing bathhouses, and promoting bloodletting and prayer to combat plagues that made a grim life even worse during the Dark Ages. The actions of the Church that set Western civilization back a thousand years were not done by a tiny minority of extremists or fringe fanatics -- the orders came from the popes themselves. Should Christianity get the credit for the flourishing of European culture during the Renaissance and the Age of Enlightenment? I would say no, since efforts to improve life and acquire new knowledge, were carried out after the Church was forced to grudgingly concede some ground, first to the Greek philosophers, and slowly over time to advancing scientific understanding of the world around us. Even in this day and age, when we have big problems to deal with, we have the religious of all stripes fighting against sensible abortion policies, stem cell research and euthanasia, because they insist on dragging their medieval understanding of the mind into any and every life issue debate. Even more insidious, the heavy influence of Christian and Muslim religious leaders (most notably, the Vatican) have successfully taken overpopulation off the table as an issue for policy makers to discuss. This, at a time when population growth rates that had been slowing for two decades, are now on the rebound, and we are straining to provide the food and fresh water to feed the now more than 6.5 billion people on this planet. The human population growth is also increasing environmental degradation and causing an increase in the extinctions of mammals, amphibians, and even insects, that is unprecedented in Earth's history -- past extinctions have never been this rapid, and present trends will lead to the human race joining the extinction list in another hundred to two hundred years if nothing is done to stop this headlong rush to disaster. That said, I have no objection to going to church for a religious experience of some form or other -- I even occasionally attend Unitarian/Universalist services, since they are apparently the only church that uses a set of shared principles, rather than shared metaphysical dogmas as their organizing principle. Many Catholics reject the Vatican's dangerous dogmas that encourage overpopulation, and they should be speaking out against the Pope and other Church hierarchy about the harm they are doing by encouraging a population explosion in the Third World, instead of sitting silently in the pews.

Yes, and there really wasn't much of a case, since the plaintiffs were trying to build a case around the pseudoscience of subliminal messaging. http://www.csicop.org/si/9611/judas_priest.html And why should freedom of religion include freedom from criticism and condemnation for promoting dangerous and harmful dogmas, and in the case of the man who murdered his son - we don't know yet what, if anything, the nondenominational church he attended played in either trying to convince him he needed help, or whether they considered his delusional thinking to be evidence of real religious experience. But in the infamous case of Andrea Yates, the Texas mother who drowned her five children, many people who studied the case were convinced that the minister shared some of the blame for the tragedy, but charges were never brought against him for his role in pushing a delusional woman over the edge..............freedom of religion again. Numerous media outlets alleged that Yates' minister, Michael Peter Woroniecki, bears some responsibility for the deaths, reporting that he and his wife built a framework of homicidal and suicidal delusions in Yates' impressionably ill mind through "relentless gloom and doom sermonizing."[36][37][38][39] She had come to believe that she was a "bad mother" who was spiritually and behaviorally damaging her children, and that it was better to kill herself and her offspring rather than to allow them to continue "stumbling" and go to hell[40]--a staple of her minister's teaching to parents found on his 1996 video, which the Yates both received from him and watched.[41] After viewing this video, Dr. Lucy Puryear told Houston's KTRK-13 News and Good Morning America that although Andrea would have still been mentally ill, she didn't believe Yates would have ever drowned her children had it not been for Woroniecki's religious influences.[42] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrea_Yates

After all of the years of accumulating Republican debt, it's a disingenuous scheme to try to paint Democrats as big spenders now. Who took a balanced budget and blew a hole through it in the first place? Republican economics, especially since the Bush Years, has been revealed to be a total fraud since there was no real economic growth since the year 2000, as Paul Krugman points out, the higher GDP numbers were a reflection of depleted savings and increasing debts throughout the U.S. economy - at all levels of government, business and right down to the consumer. Many people had a nagging feeling that they really weren't getting richer, since they were taking on overtime to try to keep up, and using rising property values to take equity out of their homes for major purchases and vacations. Krugman makes a good analogy with the Madoff ponzi scheme investments that gave a false sense of rising prosperity, all to come crashing down - in this case, when real estate values fell back to Earth.

No you can't....at least not if you're intellectually honest and not just looking for something to divert attention. Unlike rock music and Dungeons and Dragons, organized religion provides organizational reinforcement for its fantasy worlds. This provides extra reinforcement for someone who's delusional to rely on the voices in his head for guidance.

In the old days, there wasn't a whole lot to distinguish PC's from Liberals, except on constitutional issues -- ever since Laurier, the Liberals consistently push for a stronger federal government, at the expense of the provinces, while even the reddest of Red Tories favoured a more decentralized federation that gives more rights to the provinces.......other than that, it was a little confusing, since both parties had their left and right wings that frequently overlapped. I know your not a Mike Harris fan, and I certainly wouldn't try to defend everything that he did during his two terms as Premier of Ontario, but I still feel the need to point out that his move to a more ideologically driven conservatism, did not include the social agenda that Stephen Harper has tried to push in his imitation of Republicans south of the border. Harris kept a laser-like focus on cutting taxes and government spending, which were necessary to keep Ontario from becoming a have-not province after the economy stagnated under the pressure of continual spending and tax increases during the David Peterson and Bob Rae governments. Harris has to get credit for turning the economy around and balancing the provincial budget. On other fronts, his ambitions were a disaster -- especially his dream of eliminating regional government. The promised reduced costs and increased efficiencies of amalgamation never happened in Hamilton or Toronto. His reforms to education and health care were mixed at best -- but he did resist the pleading of advisers, to go after social issues like abortion and same-sex benefits. Those kind of issues would not have brought in a lot of extra votes, but many Conservative strategists back then wanted to cultivate a base of "values voters" as campaign workers. The Republicanization of the Conservative Party of Canada has likely gone as far as it can go, now that Republican economics have left the U.S. trapped under trillions of dollars of debt -- it is no longer any kind of shining example of how to manage the economy -- and Conservatives up here are going to have to plot a more moderate course.

And the support system that sanctions honour killings, female circumcision, polygamy and child brides cannot be separated away from the religion that provides justification for misogyny and instructs husbands to beat their wives if they disobey them, and stone to death any woman who brings "shame" on the family for infidelity or for losing her virginity. In this specific case, judging from the news blurbs, we know that she got the house and the kids, and likely some generous support payments -- so right there, we certainly know that this divorce wasn't settled in front of a Sharia tribunal, since a Muslim woman who seeks to divorce her husband under Islamic law has to prove she has just cause first (the man has no similar obligation), and if granted, she leaves the marriage with nothing! She loses custody of the children, unless he voluntarily surrenders his custodial rights, and he doesn't have to support her financially. So, for a Muslim man, having to go through Western-style divorce court -- this would be seen as a personal humiliation, and that no doubt played a role in the barbaric act he carried out as revenge.

Good to know! As I suspected, all of those prophets in the Bible were nuts........except for the ones who were just making up stories to bolster a claim of being able to talk to God.

Yes! Yes! Blame the $^*damn religion! Is that so hard to understand? http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2009/02/12/Dad...71281234475937/ Mix one part schizophrenia with religious doctrine that the believer must trust God above his own ability to reason, and voila -- he suppresses his own misgivings and trusts that little voice in his head calling himself God, and this is what we end up with. A big shoutout goes to that OT story of Abraham demonstrating his faith in Yahweh, by following through on the order to offer up his son Isaac as a blood sacrifice. The moral of the story is simple -- if God tells you to commit an unspeakable act, you demonstrate your faith by following orders.....and maybe hoping that he sends an angel to stop you at the last second from committing murder. A few years back, there were a couple of notable cases of mothers (Susan Smith and Andrea Yates) who were stressed out mothers with mental illness issues, and they drowned their children to protect them from Satan. We can be thankful that less "faithful" Christians sufficiently compartmentalize these teachings so that, if they ever do hear voices giving them orders, they make an appointment with a psychiatrist rather than committing an act of murder!

There are two different views of the threat of Islamic extremism (referring to people who do consider it a threat to begin with) 1. secularists, representing nonbelievers and religious people who do not want any religion in public policy 2. Christians and a few Jews, who want an emphasis put on "Judeochristian principles" and many who want outright Christian government. The Christian fundamentalists want all of our attention focused outward at the dangers of Islam, and keep telling us that their religion is different, and can in no way become a harmful force that supports fascism. Secularists know better than to just take their word on it, and see much of their strategy as an attempt to destroy secularism on the homefront, since they continually attack science, public education and humanism. So, when you join this debate with the contention that we shouldn't be comparing Muslim extremists with what you claim is a tiny minority of extremists on the Christian side, you also identified yourself as a supporter of standard neoconservative wisdom that we should be part of the war in Afghanistan. This strategy has never been logical right from the beginning, but it was sold along with the Iraq War through fear of terrorism, and somehow encouraging the "moderate Muslims." Does this make any sense coming from people who contend that there is no such thing as a moderate version of Islam, and that this religion will always be at war with the West? When it comes to our fundie extremists, I want to know why these groups have such powerful and wealthy backers to advance their propaganda, and why they are never criticized within the wider conservative movement. I recall about ten years ago, when Operation Rescue was still a headline grabber, that Rush Limbaugh was comparing them to black, civil rights demonstrators of the 60's, and asked why conservatives should condemn their harassment of abortion clinic staff and clients. As for the Assassins -- if you already knew the history (and it's alot more complex than what I tried to briefly outline) why did you offer them up as a proof that terrorism is an intrinsic part of the Muslim religion? If we want to go back in history to look for examples of terrorism, we can trace this type of asymmetrical warfare back at least as far as 2000 years ago, before the Jewish Rebellion against Rome. A small Jewish sect known as the Zealots, was getting impatient waiting and waiting for the Messiah to arrive and liberate God's people from Roman occupation; so they started a campaign of targeted assassinations of Roman soldiers and government officials -- and the name Zealot, would live on as a reference for any fanatical believer who is willing to do anything for the cause. There is nothing to indicate that terrorism is an exclusive Muslim phenomena; on the contrary, any fanatical group that argues that their cause is so important, that any and all means of warfare can be used, will turn to terrorism.

I didn't say terrorism was new, but suicide attacks and suicide bombers are a new phenomena, and actually got going first in the Sri Lankan Civil War. The point I was making, was that the Muslim World had been in a state of decline, and there were many reform movements based on western, secular models, that wanted to strip the mosques and their clerics of political and judicial authority. And then, once the oil dollars started flowing in..................... Anyway, the Assassins of the 11th and 12th Centuries came from the breakaway Islamic sect in Persia called Ismailism. The Hashshashin came from the Nizari branch of Ismaili Shiism; so they were in effect, a splinter group within a splinter group. For what it's worth, they didn't represent the mainstream of Islamic practices during their time, so what significance do they have today? Not that their enemies were any more benevolent or merciful! They were trying to survive during harsh and brutal times, and the Islamic Caliphate was becoming even less tolerant of heretical sects, much like the Catholic Church in Europe had done to purge heresy. So they developed a strategy of asymmetrical warfare that enabled them to survive for two centuries while being surrounded by enemies; can't fault them for that! What it all boils down to is that the MiddleEast policy established by George Bush, and supported by conservatives in this country, is an incoherent mess! If Islam is a special case among religions -- being particularly evil and dysfunctional, and represents a threat to Western Civilization, then why are we financing them through oil purchases and allegedly trying to bring "democracy" to Iraq and Afghanistan? The two arguments don't fit together. Just like Mexico, as long as the U.S. is waging a war on drugs, we have little freedom to stray too far from U.S. drug policy.

Did I say that? To be honest, the toxic stew they've blended together (and some conservatives up here are trying to emulate) by mixing religion, nationalism and I would say even racial purity by some Republicans who are panicked that America may not be a white majority nation in 30 years, are all the ingredients needed to create an authoritarian fascist movement. "When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross." - Sinclair Lewis

You must be living on top of a mountain or something! Either that or constant news stories about crackhouses and grow-ops being busted here in Hamilton is an anomaly, and we are alone in experiencing drug-related crimes and the periodic efforts of law enforcement to shut some of them down. No, actually the terrorism, Islamic fundamentalism and associated headaches are a relatively modern phenomena that have been exacerbated by giving the oil sheikdoms in the Persian Gulf and Arabian Peninsula billions and billions of our dollars so that they can attempt to buy their way into the Islamic heaven after a life of gluttony and debauchery by giving large, generous donations to their religious authorities for the propagation of the most conservative voices in their religion. There were no burqas and sharia courts in Pakistan and Afghanistan until Saudi-funded madrassahs replaced the fledgling public education systems. They offered to educate children for free, as long as it included their religious education.....the rest is history. Even thirty or forty years ago, the Islamists were seen as a relic of the past in most of the Muslim World. Another factor that turned the tide from secularism to Islamism, was that most secularists were either Marxist or Marxist-friendly in their political philosophies. The Soviets backed Gamel Nasser, and the Baath parties in Syria and Iraq, and the U.S. countered by supporting Saudi Arabia and the Islamic theocrats who were identifed as the only opposition to Communism........the way events have played out in the MiddleEast, we would have been better off dealing with the communists!

Little movements have a habit of growing big if conditions are ripe for growth. In the U.S. Forty years ago, the Religious Right was a joke, but years of tireless effort of brainwashing church members that they lived in a "Christian nation", they made the Republican Party the natural governing political party for the first time since 1933. They elected a president who carried out their agenda, and hopefully enough of the rank and file religious right have woken up to the fact that their church leaders have been calling on them to support political leaders who have been working directly against the economic interests of everyone who is not a member of the rich and the super-rich classes of people. They combined the concept of casting votes based on "faith issues" with selling the dream that everyone can become a multimillionaire if they are capable self-starters and work hard to achieve their dream. This is why John McCain trotted out "Joe the Plumber" over and over again in the Fall Election. Joe The Plumber became the mascot of the Republican super-rich because their most influential leader - Rush Limbaugh, brags almost daily about how much it costs to maintain his own corporate jet (EIB One) -- and only the most delusional dittoheads believe that they will buy a mansion some day in Limbaugh's exclusive Palm Beach gated community, or play a round of golf with him at his country club. Joe the unlicensed plumber's dreams, at least seemed achievable at first glance. Now that the economy is tanking from the debtload, even the most hopeful and optimistic Republicans, who are watching their own little businesses go bankrupt, realize that they aren't going to have a future of flying around in their very own jet, like Limbaugh.....so, you may have a point there that the Religious Right in the U.S. and Canada has reached its peak, and won't be able to wield the authority that their Muslim counterparts do over their believers. If your village in the hills of Afghanistan or Pakistan is destroyed by remotely guided missiles because Al Qaeda, or suspected Al Qaeda gunmen pass through frequently, would you consider it a terrorist attack or collateral damage?

That is the key troubling feature of having people motivated by faith, rather than reason, in deciding the merits of public policy issues. Authoritarian power structures, whether government or church, love faith-based thinking because people are trained right from childhood not to question or raise objections, but instead to accept the word of the authority figure who is acting on God's behalf......and when church authority figures confer God's blessings on political leaders, most of the flock follows along with the ridiculous notion that the politician is trying to carry out God's will -- what other explanation is there for George Bush leaving office with a 27% job approval rating! 27%!!!!!! Brian Mulroney was in single digits because of the GST and economic stagnation, and here's the biggest clusterf#### of all time who ever sat behind the desk in the Oval Office, and he still has over one quarter of eligible U.S. voters willing to do it all over again! The difference between Bush and Mulroney was that Brian didn't have prayer breakfast's every 2nd Sunday with lots of video of televangelists asking God to bless every stupid policy he came up with. And besides the members of the Pat Robertson and Ted Haggard fan clubs, mainstream churches like the RC's, have been very vocal in U.S. politics (not so visible in Canada) about making "life" issues to decide which candidate to support; so U.S. Catholics who believe all this will support the leader who bans funding for embryonic stem cell research, even if he is lazy and dangerously incompetent. Before I get too far offtrack about the political use of religious authority, it should be mentioned that these cases of child abuse by religious authorities (it happens outside the Catholic Church too) are the tip of the iceberg -- and we unfortunately have good reason to believe this because the few cases of Catholic priests and other ministers being prosecuted by state authorities for preying upon children and teenagers, is that these predators have been shown to have deliberately targeted children who come from the most devout families and have the most trust in adult authority figures. Many victims have testified that by the time they did start questioning and refusing to cooperate, the priests, realizing that the first strategy wasn't working, would switch to blackmailing the victim by reminding him or her that their parents were very devoted to the church, and how upset they would be if they learned about the scandal. In the case of the Roman Catholic Church, they deserve extra condemnation for sexual abuse crimes because the governing church authorities are complicit in suppressing legal action of the victims and victim's families, and moving offending priests out of province, and even out of country, to continue preying upon new victims.

And if you read the propaganda from rightwing spin machines, you would never know that they take more from the federal government than what they put back in taxes! These are the same people who are always bitching about too much government, their taxes being too high and supporting freeloading socialists.....and yet they feel they are entitled to the goodies they receive from the federal government.

I shouldn't be the one to have to inform you that your co-worker may have a valid point! There is a lot of money poured into the War On Drugs every year; it's not a big stretch to consider that law enforcement agencies can be motivated to advocate the present prohibition strategy because of the rewards they receive for fighting the drug wars. I know our Forces are trying to maintain a much lower profile than the Americans, but still, it doesn't appear that the Afghans appreciate the "aid" they are getting from foreign troops. What you call convoluted logic is just the simple fact that Muslim extremists get much of their propaganda ammunition provided for them when Western infidels send armies to occupy their territories......and of course they get the money needed to finance an aggressive campaign to spread their religion from the billions of dollars that MiddleEastern nations take in each year in oil sales. It's not convoluted to come to the realization that defunding the MiddleEast oil business, and removing Western troops from Muslim countries, is the only workable strategy that will decrease Islamic Fascism. The present policies are just feeding the beast!

The Church's criminal negligence by suppressing this issue for decades and causing untold damage to young children is bad, but if we are using effects and consequences as the guide to judge harmful dogma, the pedophile priest issue is a small one considering the small number of people involved. On the other hand I think the most damaging thing the Vatican has done in the last 30 years is to use their Church's influence to shut down efforts to control population growth -- all environmental policies are only delaying the inevitable if population growth continues. http://www.population-security.org/14-CH6.html

Jesus doesn't say forget the Mosaic Law( at least not always): MATTHEW 5:18 For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. 5:19 Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 19:17 And he said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God: but if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.]

Then you have one less reason to be shocked about Muslim extremism! Now that we are trying to make deals with local Taliban chiefs, it makes the whole purpose of the invasion a waste, aside from destroying Al Qaeda bases there and taking out their leaders. You can't bitch about Muslim extremism honestly, while supporting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and supporting groups in Israel that build new settlements in the Occupied Territories......and don't forget the oil! If we kept the policies that were started back in the 70's, to reduce the demand for oil, Islam would not have our billions of dollars to finance their madrassahs and propagate their religion so aggressively in the first place.

For some reason you Christian theocrats consider your attempts to impose your will on others to be rightful, but that competing brand of religion is evil incarnate because they're trying to dominate the world too. The Dominionists behind movements like Premise Keepers believe in implementing Biblical Law (Theonomy) once enough Christians have been retrained to want Mosaic Law to replace the Civil Law.....and by the way, the penalty for violating those laws, including the ones mentioned in the Ten Commandments is public stoning! So how is that different than Sharia, other than the fact that they have had a 50 year head start massaging their message into the heads of their followers?