Mirabile Dictu! An Actor Who Understands What He's Portraying!

[naamagatus]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "jwcpgh" <jwcpgh at y...> wrote:
> 
> Laura:
> 
> As long as Christianity and Islam see each other as opponents, they 
> both pose a mortal danger to the entire world.  Viggo is absolutely 
> right.  Peace is worth struggling for, and there's room in this 
> world for all of us.  It's prefectly absurd to imagine that there's 
> only one way to find the infinite God, who has created us in our 
> amazing diversity.  

The problem is that the principle of tolerance is *not* accepted by a 
large number of Muslims. Of course, it's also not accepted by a large 
number of Christians, either. The difference is, that in what we call 
Christian countries the ruling doctrine is secular, not religious at 
all. Therefore, the inherent intolerance of Christianity is 
segregated from the political arena. 
Historically, this split (of secular vs. religious spheres) developed 
from Christianity itself. From early times it was seen as proper that 
there should be pope and king - seperate rulers of seperate domains. 
In Islam, the ideal ruler (the Caliph) embodies both spheres. Or, 
rather, there was no split - life - personal and political - is to be 
regulated according to Islam. Add to this the injunction to Jihad - 
spreading Islam by the force of the sword - and you get an extremely 
intolerant political culture. 


> 
> I refuse to be afraid of Islam.  I know too many good, kind, 
> admirable Muslims for that.  I'm not happy with some of its 
> practitioners, but I'm not happy with a good number of my fellow 
> Jews either.  The fact that practitioners choose to corrupt a good 
> doctrine doesn't make the doctrine corrupt.  

As I tried to show above, the intolerance is not a symptom of 
corruption of doctrine. It is part and parcel of the doctrine itself -
as it is in Christianity and Judaism. The difference in tolerance 
lies in the difference between the societies/cultures, not between 
the religions.  

>We need to encourage 
> moderate Muslims to come forward and retake their religion, not 
> treat Islam like the coming of the Black Death.  Respect doesn't 
> always create respect, but we all know what hatred creates.

How do you intend to carry this out? I mean, in what form do you 
envision this encouragement? 


Naama