WIP

Some day, I would like to see you and others who claim that Muslims and/or Arabs are incorrigible and worse than other religions or ethnic groups put your cards on the table, instead of just leaving your trail of breadcrumbs to the conclusions you desire. So; what's your solution: Should France expel or exterminate all Muslims and North African immigrants? Why/ or why not? If they cannot be reasoned with, negotiated with, or trusted in any long term, then what do you propose as the final solution?

I don't know how France resolves their immigration issues now, but a good start would have been to acknowledge that there was a problem in the first place. If the immigrants are living on the economic margins and mostly come from countries that were former French colonies, it may have been smart to recognize possible complications. From what little I've followed of French politics over the years, it seems to me they have never found a way to resolve the basic conflicts between upholding complete racial equality while honouring their nation's imperial history. They have never managed to come clean about their past, and instead just try to ignore it and hope immigrants also ignore the past.

So, along with war on ISIS, War on Terror etc., we can replay WWII all over again? At least the War in the Pacific, if Japan goes rogue, like Russia did after the end of the Soviet Union and all of that communism blather we got marinated in for decades!

Apparently, surnames provide a good indication of religious affiliation. I'm sure that the religion of any applicants who are interviewed as part of the screening process, can be easily discovered by the immigration officials, if they want to know.

From what I have heard of the Japanese political scene, this new Prime Minister - Abe, is cut from the same cloth as the rest of the Neocon global fascists! He...like every right wing leader before him...wants to cast off rules imposed after WWII that limited Japan's military rebuilding. Since, he is in good with U.S. and international global policy, he may very well get his wish! I'm sure that the beheadings of two Japanese nationals are being milked for all their worth in this effort. Also worth noting, that when Abe first came to power...shortly after the Fukushima Meltdowns, his first actions were to impose news and information blackouts and restrict the sales and use of Geiger counters to measure levels of radiation. Shortly after, it was made a crime to issue negative reports on Fukushima, including actual extent of damage and radiation leaks, but also the corruption involving TEPCO executives being shielded from facing charges for criminal negligence. In the larger picture, it has to be noted that the ISIS phenomena follows a pattern similar to many other groups using terrorist tactics. The primary goal is to cause extreme counter-attacks and extreme reactions from the other side. The anti-democratic state fascists on the other side, have a weird symbiotic relationship with organizations like ISIS: they both feed off each other, and try to kill off all talk of moderation, or anything short of full scale warfare. It's been said many times before, and it needs to be said again: ISIS would not exist without U.S. foreign policy ventures in Iraq and the Middle East in the first place! For all their talk about Islam and religion, ISIS is stocked with generals and lower ranking officers from Saddam Hussein's Army and Revolutionary Guard elite forces. Bush & co. thought it would be easy to drop a few bombs, march in and take over, and dissolve and disband the Iraqi military and civil government apparatus. And as we now know full well, much of the former government went underground, and applied their bomb-making skills and other terrorist skills in a rear-guard attack against the U.S./Anglo occupiers. The U.S. put the whole country under the control of a corrupt Shiite clique that continued ethnically cleansing Baghdad and other cities of Sunnis, and monopolizing control over the nation's oil. The first Sunni revolt...which saw the rise of 'Al Qaeda in Iraq' was put down mostly by bribing Sunni warlords to fight against AQI. But, after being shut out from government, the military, and pushed to the economic margins, it's no surprise that an even worse reaction - ISIS, arose and has turned out to be even worse than Al Qaeda. And the rest....like they say...is history! Stop interfering with and trying to seize control of the oil in foreign nations, and it's very unlikely there would be an ISIS problem to begin with! Now, Canada and ALL western forces...especially the U.S., have to be very careful about who to support in any war against ISIS. Because, not only are the western advisors and policymakers as clueless about local events as ever, but every ally taking money and arms from the west is immediately cast in a cloud of suspicion by the locals! There are enemies of ISIS over there....Kurds, Shias and other minorities, and certainly the majority of Sunnis don't want to be part of ISIS's "caliphate." But, they not only have to deal with a movement that has put the Islamic stamp on the terror and brutality they applied as henchmen for Saddam, they also are well aware of the intentions of Iraq's Shia Government and the goals of foreign oil companies. So, in the end, I'm going with: get the hell out and let the locals sort things out! And that would have been the natural course of events here long before the situation got this far out of hand; BUT they have oil! And, as we now know: Intervention in civil wars ‘far more likely in oil-rich nations’

NO, everyone was NOT a barbarian, or a plunderer! That has been a relatively recent...in terms of human history...development, with the first clear evidence of marauding, male-dominated warrior tribes moving out from Central Asia in all directions about 4000 years ago. Look up some of the first large permanent settlements, like Catalhoyuk in Asia Minor, and note that this village which would have had a population in the thousands had NO walls surrounding it, or any types of fortifications, nor were there clear examples of weapons being designed for warfare, rather than hunting! It was a completely different world before the time that fixed agriculture including animals, became the norm for an increasingly crowded world. The rise of the age of agriculture was long considered the great achievement of human progress that benefited everyone. What we have learned in recent decades was that it was a step back for the vast majority of people who remained in low status under the oppression of ruling hierarchies. This may be a big part of the reason why Garden of Eden idyllic myths of the past arose in cultures around the world who made similar transitions from hunter/gatherer to permanently tilling the soil. The German archaeologist - Klaus Schmidt, wrote a long article for National Geographic a few years back before he died, about his findings at Gobekli Tepe in southern Turkey. At the time, the dig was reaching down to layers more than 12,000 years old. These large stone monuments...now believed to have had wide religious significance, were built by late Neolithic hunter gatherers, who arrived at Gobekli once or twice a year, to conduct some forms of rituals, along with continuing work on the statues and possibly - temples. Schmidt's theory was that Gobekli was the source of our Garden of Eden story, as it has so many common features with being cast out of paradise beginning about 6000 years ago. There is too much to write on in one post, but sometime I am going to have to get around to starting a thread on the subject of anthropology, because so much of what we were taught in school was BS, and new understandings of human origins and the development of civilization were suppressed for decades because they weren't in synch with orthodox history.

Is that any different than Christianity? And, you have already looked up what 1.5 billion Muslims believe about their religion, and how it relates to the world, and how those Muslims in the West believe their religion relates to living among a majority of infidels or non-adherents? Since there doesn't seem to be any Muslim members of this forum (I wonder why!) the critics, especially the harsh critics who try to stop the building of mosques, stop Muslim immigration, support foreign wars and occupations in Muslim-majority nations etc., should be the ones who are the real Islamic scholars here....and I mean REALLY understanding the religion, not just taking the propaganda off of Jihadwatch and other propaganda sites that have likely been created for the purpose of creating a Muslim version of the Red Menace, that functioned as the previous tool for surveillance and ever-increasing military and security budgets! If they couldn't create a Muslim terrorism threat to justify the military-industrial-surveillance complex, they would have looked a little further down the list to find the next foreign enemy that could be used to inspire hysteria among conservatives who are always prone to hysteria. So, how many versions of Sharia Law are there? If it was considered divine, there would be only one.

It is when the religious extremists have state power over us! We have more to fear from the Christian extremists (like Harper) who have military, security and surveillance powers at their disposal, and raise the foreign terrorism boogeyman to justify the march towards fascism. This is btw, one of the major reasons why I have a big problem with the rose-coloured-glasses presentation of history by the likes of Steven Pinker - who tells us that violence is on a long thousands of years decline because of the rise of state power. Governments may be necessary, BUT the issues of terrorism must be addressed along side the use of state power by government. Terrorism often becomes the warfare of the dispossesed - Asymmetrical warfare against larger, more powerful forces, with increasing levels of surveillance power in the modern age of the internet and handheld devices. *As a side note, as long as we are talking about "extremism"; I'd like to know why all of the Muslim extremism pundits I've come across never include Anders Breivik's massacre in Norway as an example of Christian terrorism? Instead, on the day of the Hebdo Shootings in Paris, I watched two different MSM talking heads call it the worst terrorist attack in Europe since the 7/7 Subway Bombing in London...leapfrogging right over Breivik! Could it be that all the good conservative Christians with an opinion, find ways to disqualify Breivik as one of their own? While demanding that all the Muslims in the world take ownership of every guy with a beard and a Quran, as an example of their religion's collective use of terrorism! fwiw regarding thread derailing - I took a few minutes to scan through this three year old thread, and it appears to me to have started as a straight out attempt to proselytize non-evangelicals by a former member here; and I was surprised that the merits of hers and other more liberal approaches to Christianity, and atheist critiques of fundamentalist Christianity and Christianity in whole, were aired out over 15 pages. So, if the resurrected version here has little to do with the original, that's besides the point! At some point, somebody should have raised the question of what are the social consequences of the OP's dogmatic, restrictive and unyielding version of Christianity, which wouldn't tolerate anything outside of a narrow, predetermined orthodoxy.

Palin is a good example of what some psychologists refer to as different categories of intelligence. Because she sure as hell is not book smart...but she must have a high degree of Machiavellian intelligence, judging from her unwarranted political and media success. Her ability to manipulate the right people and carefully choose friends and enemies.....at least up till now, is brilliant! The latest word I came across on her, is that top Republican officials and moneymen want to keep her away from the next convention. Palin, and her male version - Donald Trump, have become too embarrassing for top GOP officials trying to improve their image.

This thread needs to be retitled: The Folly of the George Bush/Neocon Approach! Without regime change theory and propping up corrupt Arab monarchs, there wouldn't be an ISIS in the first place! But, leave it to the right wing idiots, who want to stir up crap all over the world, for demanding more wars, more money for military budgets, and more suppression of our freedoms and surveillance on us!

Back to France then! What the French and the international collection of claimed secular allies have done is make the already sharp divide between nativist French and North African Muslim immigrants even sharper! I don't think I have even commented on whether or not Hebdo's cartoons should have been legal, but whether we should be supporting them. Worth noting that France is not free speech paradise as claimed by some observers. Their standards on free speech are not as free as ours by a long shot! There are a whole list of topics you can't discuss openly and honestly in French media, and since the Charlie Hebdo shootings, there have been more than 54 arrests for violating France's civil speech laws, some of the charges, like the one against a West African comedian seem totally bogus looking in from the outside, considering what Hebdo was allowed to publish in its pages! But, my objection is not whether they it should be legal to publish pictures and articles with degrading images to insult the members of certain religions...the excuse that they do it to the Pope too...is bogus, because the only devoutly Catholic adherents in the whole Country are likely in the isolated rural populations...certainly not in the major cities. So, most French could care less what is and what isn't said about the Pope or Catholicism. But, that is not the case with Islam in France. The Hebdo clique were well aware that...unlike here...France's Muslim population is almost entirely immigrant and almost as entirely Algerian in ancestry, and almost entirely a marginalized low income demographic in the French population. So, their disregard of racial and cultural underpinnings with the declaration that it's all about the religion are fraudulent! I don't know whether it's true or not, but I came across a few sources a couple of weeks ago who noted Hebdo's financial problems prior to the departure of former editor Philippe Val, and speculated that their supposed left-liberal political orientation had really shifted to join the anti-immigrant fascists...at least on race and immigration issues. And, it seems they were being financially rewarded enough to carry on with their magazine. This makes attacking their religious symbols - like the Prophet Muhammed a loaded issue, considering the genocide that de Gaulle carried out late in the Algerian Civil War in his desperate effort to cling to holding on to that colony! The sordid history of France in Africa, is one of those subjects that is not allowed to be openly discussed in public there! The Algerian civil war is not taught in French history classes....it's sort of like Germany's collective amnesia about the Holocaust, which they still deal with as little as possible. So, my big objection to all this Je Suis Charlie BS is that all those in the west, following glorious examples like Bill Maher, once again seize upon an issue, without even bothering to take a look below the surface and at least try to gain a little understanding of what is going on there. Too many people have taken sides too quickly and easily, because they already decided at the outset that the Muslim side has to be the wrong side, and whoever is opposing them...even the French..have to be right!

I doubt I was the first to bring up Israel here, because I comment on points I see made that I don't agree with.

Sure, the Sun newspapers are never going to say anything nasty about Harper, but what about the way Sun Media serves the Conservative Party during elections - attacking every Liberal or NDP leader in federal and provincial elections...and getting increasingly hysterical, the more it looks like the Tories are going to lose....like Harper will whenever he calls the next federal election! If you just want to see sunshine coming out of the PM's ass all you have to do is watch the Sun News Channel 24/7.

That too I guess. I didn't know it was actually considered a science...kind of scary in a way!

You should have paid attention during your history classes then! Because, what these liberal revisionists were likely trying to do, was to end the white euro supremacism that permeated all European thinking in the days when European explorers, conquerors, colonists, slaveholders and other exploiters, were moving out and taking control of the rest of the world. Our European ancestors WERE evil plunderers, and what's worse in my estimation, is their lack of regard or respect for nature has become the operating principle of today's globalized capitalism....which pretends that everyone can be a winner...just like those lottery commercials on TV! In the era of formal colonialism, the colonial powers didn't hide their intentions and motivations in the shadows. They declared upfront that these darker peoples they discovered in other lands were inferior and deserving of exploitation; and they had no rights to their natural resources, and their labour could also be taken for free (slavery) to ship the products of their work back to England, France, Holland, Belgium, Spain, Portugal...later Germany also...when Germany became a united nation, the new Kaiser (cousin of Queen Victoria) threw a tantrum because she had both of the highest peaks in Africa as part of her empire (Mount Kenya and Mount Kilimanjaro), so Queen Victoria played the adult in the room and gave the younger monarch her colony of Tanganyika....that's how callously the Euro nobility considered these lands and the people who live on them! The entire topic of colonialism can branch off in hundreds of different directions that only tangentially connect with this topic. But, it needs to be noted that historians in other parts of the world, like the late Egyptian scholar - Edward Said, did provide that view of colonialism from the other side and how it affected life in the places that were colonized. So, I would bet that most of the revisionism you were exposed to, contained lessons that you should have paid attention to, that for many....especially right wing reactionaries...reject out of hand, because they are returning to the attitudes of manifest destiny...whether religious or newer secular formulations of euro superiority.

And I still don't intend to read his book! I was a member of Harris's discussion forum and a regular reader of his many blog articles after I picked up a copy of "The End of Faith," probably some time in 2002. At the time, I thought he was spot on, and he was certainly out front of later atheist celebrities like Dawkins and Hitchens. But over time, I started questioning his reasoning on the whole range of subjects he studies and writes about. Like I said before, I agree with what he writes about the determinism/free will issue, but almost nothing else these days. Regarding his solving of the is/ought problem....or more accurately that science will discover enough facts to arrive at answers to moral questions, it was probably this TED lecture that I watched, and...well...I don't agree with his scientism: http://www.ted.com/talks/sam_harris_science_can_show_what_s_right But, it's off the topic of religion and religious issues like Sharia and Sharia Law anyway.

People have such short attention spans these days that historical context has become meaningless. Three or four or more years ago, a certain someone here started a thread:"President Teleprompter" which featured Sarah taking a poke at Obama's reliance on using teleprompters during speeches. So, when Sister Sarah's teleprompter mysteriously stopped functioning at the Iowa Freedumb Summit a week or so ago, we were once again reminded of how stupid and vacuous she is unplugged! I guess the GOP billionaires like to promote the dummies because they are: a. easy to manipulate if and when they ever get in office. b. they provide great comedic moments in an otherwise dour and humorless movement.

Well, this time you are making up your propaganda whole cloth, since you couldn't find a way to twist what I said previously. I never declared that Jews have all become Republicans...though there are some very loud Jewish voices in most right wing media today, who claim to be speaking on behalf of the Jewish people. So, assuming that Jews are behind U.S. Government policy....as an Arab neighbour of mine did awhile back, are easy mistakes to make for anyone here who's just casually looking at the news and editorial coverage. My point...drawn from a Republican Jewish spokesman many years back, was that he observed the dichotomy in American Jewry of the time (early 80's, which I already mentioned) where Jews were tied in income demographics with the wealthiest sect - Episcopalians, but voted almost in synch with the poorest economic demographic - blacks. To him, this seemed to be an anomaly caused by the fact that Jews...no matter how much wealth they attained, were never welcomed into white society....meaning the private clubs and associations in New York and surrounding cities. That was until the 80's, and this Republican strategist believed that Jews were then now free to vote solely for their economic interests, just as most other whites were. Don't blame me for his conclusions....and I never felt it was important whether or not the Republican Party was able to grow their Jewish vote or not. If they didn't, that says something, considering all of their pandering to their Christian Zionists in the base. Regarding what's happening in America's Jewish Community, I turn to this Washington Post piece: 8 fascinating trends in how American Jews think about Israel1. Sharp divide on whether Israel was "given to the Jewish people by God" • 40 percent of American Jews believe the land that is now Israel was given to the Jewish people by God. • 55 percent of American Christians believe this – far more than even most Jews – including 64 percent of Protestant Christians. • The groups least likely to believe this are secular Jews (16 percent), reform Jews (35 percent) and Catholics (38 percent). • This view is overwhelmingly common among Orthodox Jews (84 percent) and white Evangelical Christian (82 percent). If you've been to Israel, you have surely seen large tour groups of American Evangelical Christians. 2. Orthodox Jews and Evangelical Christian share skepticism of two-state solution • 61 percent of American Jews agree that "there a way for Israel and an independent Palestinian state to coexist peacefully. Compare this to 50 percent of the American public. • The biggest supporters of a two-state solution are secular Jews (72 percent), Conservative Jews (62 percent) and Reform Jews (58 percent). • The biggest skeptics are Orthodox Jews (30 percent) and white Evangelical Christian (42 percent). Note the similarities between this number and the groups who believe Israel was given to the Jews by God. 3. Few trust Palestinian peace-making; Israel's efforts also viewed skeptically • Only 21 percent of secular Jews agree that the "Israel government is making a sincere effort to bring about a peace settlement" with the Palestinians. That's a staggeringly low number. • 61 percent of Orthodox Jews believe this, including 73 percent of Modern Orthodox. The only other religious group for which over half believe this is Conservative Jews, at 52 percent. (Data for Christians is not available on this question.) • Among all Jews, 38 percent say they believe the Israel government is making a sincere effort. • The Palestinian leadership scored far worse among all group. Among all American Jews, only 12 percent believe it's making a sincere effort toward peace. That's highest among Conservative Jews (14 percent) and lowest among Ultra-Orthodox (6 percent). 4. Only one in three Jews feels strong "emotional attachment to Israel" • 30 percent of American Jews answered "very attached" when asked the level of their "emotional attachment to Israel." 39 percent said "somewhat attached" and 22 percent said "not very attached," with only 9 percent citing no attachment. • Still, that means 69 percent feel some meaningful level of attachment to Israel. More than half of every group answered either "very" or "somewhat" attached – except for secular Jews, who selected "very" and "somewhat" by 12 and 33 percent, respectively. This group makes up 22 percent of American Jews. • Orthodox Jews feel the strongest attachment, with 61 percent saying they feel very attached and 30 percent somewhat attached. 5. No group supports settlements, but Orthodox come closest • 44 percent of American Jews say the ongoing Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank "hurts Israel's security." 17 percent say it helps; 29 percent say it makes no difference. • Only 16 percent of Orthodox Jews say the settlements hurt Israeli security. 34 percent say they help (including 38 percent among Modern Orthodox) and 39 percent say it does not make a difference. • Reform and secular Jews are most likely to say that settlements hurt Israeli security, at 50 and 55 percent, respectively. • Conservative Jews say three-to-two that settlements hurt rather than help Israeli security (36 and 23 percent, respectively), making them the group closest to split. 6. Most Jews feel Israel gets the right amount of U.S. support • 54 percent of American Jews say that the level of U.S. support for Israel is "about right." 11 percent say the U.S. is too supportive and 31 that it's not supportive enough. • The general American public is more likely to skew toward wanting less support for Israel. 22 percent say their country is too supportive of Israel; 25 percent want to see more U.S. support for Israel. 41 percent say it's about right. • Only Orthodox Jews are more likely than not to say that U.S. support for Israel is insufficient. 53 percent say the U.S. is not supportive enough of Israel. They are most closely followed by white Evangelical Christians, with 46 percent saying this. • The group most likely to believe that the U.S. is too supportive of Israel: Americans who are not religiously affiliated, 35 percent of whom say this. Among Jews, it's secular Jews, at 27 percent (50 percent of this group sees support levels as "about right"). 7. Most Jews approve of Obama's handling of Israel • 60 percent of Jews say they approve of Obama's policy toward Israel. This is highest among Jews over 65 (at 66 percent) and Reform Jews (65 percent). Conservative Jews are also supportive (60 percent), with secular Jews a touch less so (54 percent). • Support is lowest among Christian groups; 38 percent of American Christians support Obama's Israel policy, including just 26 percent of white Evangelical Christians. • The most critical Jewish group is Orthodox Jews, 36 percent of whom approve of Obama's approach to Israel. 8. "Caring about Israel" not a top feature of Jewish identity • Pew came up with nine different traits commonly associated with Jewish identity and asked Jewish respondents to answer whether each is "essential to being Jewish." Among those nine traits, "caring about Israel" was the fifth most likely to be selected. 43 percent called this essential. • Traits more likely to be considered "essential to being Jewish" than caring about Israel, from most to least popular: Remembering the Holocaust, leading an ethical and moral life, working for justice/equality, being intellectually curious. • Among religious Jews, 49 percent called caring about Israel an essential Jewish trait. It still ranks fifth for this group. • Among secular Jews, only 23 percent called caring about Israel an essential Jewish trait. It ranks sixth, behind "having a good sense of humor." Taken in the aggregate, these trends from Pew's report seem to underscore the conclusions that American journalist Peter Beinart reached in his landmark 2010 piece for the New York Review of Books, "The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment," which later became his 2012 book, "The Crisis of Zionism." Beinart warned that, as Israeli policies divide the Jewish community in the United States, the liberal-leaning American Jews who have played such a major role in U.S. support for Israel could find themselves either turned or driven away from Zionism. From his 2010 essay: Among American Jews today, there are a great many Zionists, especially in the Orthodox world, people deeply devoted to the State of Israel. And there are a great many liberals, especially in the secular Jewish world, people deeply devoted to human rights for all people, Palestinians included. But the two groups are increasingly distinct. ... For several decades, the Jewish establishment has asked American Jews to check their liberalism at Zionism’s door, and now, to their horror, they are finding that many young Jews have checked their Zionism instead." As Beinart's "crisis of Zionism" plays out among young and liberal-leaning Jews, their political division from Orthodox Jews and Evangelical Christians could become even more pronounced. The question is which of these two blocks will get to set the agenda of American Zionism, and thus perhaps of U.S. policy toward Israel. It will surely be supportive of Israel, that much seems clear, but the nature of that support and the sorts of policies that are seen as most in Israel's interest are open questions. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/10/03/8-fascinating-trends-in-how-american-jews-think-about-israel/

Right, economics is the big pseudoscience today. Although I'd give evolutionary psychology the spot as runner up.

The whole rise of what is collectively termed "prosperity gospel" is interwoven into the fabric of most right wing Christian groups today even though it is a complete heresy that can only pick out a few isolated examples and even misrepresent them: the Parable of the Talents for one....it's typically used to prove that Jesus was a capitalist...and likely would be an investment banker if he lived under present conditions. The thousands of verses in New and Old Testaments condemning the rich and calling for help for the poor, are glossed over because they don't fit the goals of egotistical evangelists.

I would suggest that you go to an actual Islamic source rather than pontificate based on what the U.S. right wing propaganda sources have to say on the subject. For starters...in an otherwise somewhat misleading and unfocused Wikipedia article on the subject: Sharia, in its strictest definition, is a divine law, as expressed in the Quran and Muhammad's example (often called the sunnah). As such, it is related to but different from fiqh, which is emphasized as the human interpretation of the law.[45][46] Many scholars have pointed out that the sharia is not formally a code,[47] nor a well-defined set of rules.[48] The sharia is characterized as a discussion on the duties of Muslims[47] based on both the opinion of the Muslim community and extensive literature.[49] Hunt Janin and Andre Kahlmeyer thus conclude that the sharia is "long, diverse, and complicated."[48] I noticed this because I heard this point mentioned by some Islamic expert (forgot the name, and forgot the show) who made the point that most Muslims believe "Sharia" comes from the Quran, and is therefore divine in origin and unalterable, BUT "Sharia Law" is the application of sharia in law and everyday life for Muslims. And that means that - contrary to the anti-Muslim presentation that you have taken on here, the validity of Sharia Law is only as valid as the interpreters of Sharia Law! So, regardless of the assertions of those who want some war kind of war against Islam, Sharia Law can be whatever the leading clerics and the majority of Muslims want it to be! Sharia Law became oppressive towards women because that was the culture of Arabia of the time. And to me it's interesting to note that just as Christianity began as a progressive reform movement that sought to improve the lot for women (some Bible verses were altered and some bogus ones added to obscure this fact); Muhammed was also a reformer, who was considered radical during the time he arose in Arabia. On many issues...like the rights of women, his followers wanted to go back to the way things were before he came along, just as the followers of Jesus, and even the main apostle - Paul's messages about the position of women were rewritten by later clerics. All this is ultimately beside the point: if there is groundswell of thinking to improve the lives of women and give them more power in law and government, it will happen...regardless of what is/and what is not written in the Quran. Interpreters of "scriptures" can always find ways to make these verses say what they want them to say. It's just a shame that the enemies...of both religious traditions actually, can do the same thing, and cherrypick out shocking verses to disparage both traditions.

And if Bangladeshis become atheists, there would be no more domestic violence I presume? So far, the regime-change ticker since 9/11 hasn't provided any evidence that foreign interventions of various sorts, have done anything to improve quality of life. All evidence is they have done exactly the opposite. But, then again, that wasn't their intentions in the first place! If any nation or foreign culture is going to improve whatever they're doing now, it's not going to happen by attacking them and trying to change and westernize them! I don't believe people want to live lives of deprivation, misery, oppression and violence. If people in some part of the world are being oppressed by authorities who...are not like our Saudi friends - U.S. allies, then it's up to them to stage an uprising or a revolution to improve their lives. It shouldn't be overlooked that behind the scenes U.S. foreign policy has been to support the dictators and shut down and derail the Arab Spring uprisings from a few years back.

I agree, and these secular values are being used to justify regime changes, military interventions, western superiority, faith in techno-solutions to structural problems - food shortages, environmental destruction...even death itself (transhumanism).

I have some big problems with Harris's "Moral Landscape." First one being that this egotist declares that he has bridged the Is/Ought Paradox proposed by David Hume a couple of centuries back, as an explanation of the problem of why a set of facts fails to provide complete justification for moral choices and evaluations. But, here comes Harris! And he's got it all figured out. Too bad all of those philosophers who specialized in ethics couldn't have found the solution before he came along to enlighten us! I hate to heap scorn on Harris, since I do agree with a lot of points he takes such as modern knowledge from brain research makes determinism the reality and our sense of free will the self-generated illusion created by brain function. But, some of his moral evaluations on political events, such as advocating for the use of torture and even nuclear attack, leave me cold!

Never mind the dark ages; if we look at the Eurocentric presentation we got in history class years ago about the ages of 'exploration' and 'enlightenment' they look like a barbarian invasion that plundered the resources and enslaved the people in most of the lands they colonized. The Christian supremacism that provided the ideological justifications for moving in and taking someone else's lands and enslaving their people, has been slightly adjusted in recent times as 'secular values.' But the Eurocentrism has hardly changed whether its adherents call themselves Christians or atheists!