General Chat

i sometimes feel the people of this country are way to nice
I myself would say when in Rome live like the Romans same here
so if your in an Islamic country live like them
if here live like us


sorry if this offends anybody but its how I feel :-D :-D

Related/complementary & informative radio programme on the general subject - 'The Report' BBC Radio 4 - 8th January. Still available on the Net.

'Former jihadi Aimen Dean gives a unique insight into the workings of Islamic State (IS).

Dean left school in Saudi Arabia to fight jihad in Bosnia in the 1990s. But with the rise of al Qaeda he became disillusioned with his comrades' drift towards terrorism. He joined al Qaeda - but working undercover for the British government.

Dean has recently spoken publicly against the jihadist movement but he retains a deep network of contacts within it. Despite Dean's defection, IS supporters still debate with him. Through those discussions, Dean has gained a profound understanding of the ideology and organisational networks behind IS‘.

The main problem nowadays is the power of the mutaween - religious police.
Even the Saudi Royal family are fairly toothless against them.

King Abduaziz started a long slog towards reforms, and an equal education system. His son, King Saud became king in 1953, and his younger brother Faisal became Crown Prince and prime minister.
Faisal insisted on education for girls and set up the first school for girls in 1956 and the first female university in Saudi Arabia in 1957.
When he became king in 1964 - ousting his brother with the backing of the National Guard, and, ironically, religious police, Faisal carried on in his attempt to bring Saudi Arabia into the 20th century. He set up a welfare system and introduced television.
King Faisal also attempted to ensure that the most radical clerics did not hold society's most powerful religious posts. He tried to block extremist clerics from gaining power over key religious institutions, such as the the kingdom's highest religious body, and from rising to high religious positions such as Grand Mufti, a politically recognized senior expert charged with maintaining the entire system of Islamic law.

Unfortunately, King Faisal was assassinated in 1975, and religious zealots have since risen to powerful positions.

I had the honour of meeting King Faisal in 1973. (dog, or rather, Saluki related)
At the time, one woman in Saudi Arabia was allowed to drive.
The English woman in charge of his stables!!! :-D

All religions have similarities and differences because all humans have similarities and differences, and by that I mean that if by some miracle (!) Aetheism became the worldwide norm, wars would not go away, conflicts would still be there over land, over wealth, over perceived slights and personal arguments...

Even on this board, which is something of a microcosm of society, the personal conflict between any two people ripples out and out until it involves a much wider group who then find it impossible not to take a side.

As Rollo has said above "My friends despair of the future." So do I.

Thank you for that Rollo, very informative. And how sad for your wife's Mother's family.

I was a guest at a Muslim temple in Cardiff a few years back - Cardiff has always been very cosmopolitan due to the docks - I posed a question in our local newspaper as to whether non Muslims would be welcomed in their temples, as they are welcomed into our churches - that's how I got the invitation

It was a lovely visit, everything explained, I was given copies of various books including the Koran and was surprised at how similar Islam was to Christianity

Jesus of Nazareth was an orthodox Jew. He was also a fundamentalist hence all the hassle with money changers in the Temple, peace in our time and so on. For his very worthwhile ideas the usual punishments were meted out.

The prophet Mohammed was an ordinary guy who did not much care for the brutal and unfair society he lived in. His ideas were (and are) essentially Old Testament but rather more pro-active. Hence Islam spread all over the Middle East and to most of Spain within a hundred years of the get go. The chief method of conversion was the sword rather than argument.

Like most empires the Islamic caliphate needed a predictable environment in which to do business and trade with foreigners rather than just beating up on them. Thus the Holy Koran was smoothed out with the studies of wise men - the Hadith. Thanks to the Hadith Islam became the the religion famed for its tolerance and places of learning while Europe was still in the Middle Ages.

There is always rain on anybody's party. Even before ww2 some young Jewish groups believed that it was the destiny of the Jewish diaspora to return to Palestine.

Most of the middle east was under control of the Turks up until 1918. They ran the area in a fairly laissez faire sort of way until Lawrence of Arabia ran them out of town and the British and French shared out the middle east between them with imperial ideas. The English got the oil, the French got Beirut and Syria.

In what was to become Saudi Arabia Abdul Aziz ibn Saud did not go much on the European carve up and his tribe took the kingdom by force of camel mounted tribesman armed with scimitars and Lee Enfields. That is why to this day the flag of Saudi is two crossed swords. It may be worth noting that the Saudi displaced the Rashids, hitherto rulers of the eastern part of the country where is the oil. Deep discontent by the Rashid endures to this day.

The Saudi were and are much driven by a sect of Sunni Islam called the Wahabi. The wahabi by western standards are intolerant and fundamentalist. As far as foreigners are allowed to live there they are rigidly segregated into compounds. A lot of expats like life there imho it is awful.

So now we have in the mix Zionists, Wahabis, European imperialists. Bad enough but it gets worse.

Following another bunch of very poor decision making by the wise rulers of Europe and the USA the world ended up with the completely avoidable world war 2.

One consequence of that war was the allegation that 6 M Jews were murdered by the Third Reich. There is some controversy to these allegations for instance UKIP tend to be sceptical. Most of the family of my wife's mother died in Belsen. Her mother was tattooed and died before her time. One of my uncles fought with the 8th Army who, ironically, liberated Belsen. So if I am not very sceptical sorry for that.

Getting back to our problems with ISIL ALQ etc the Zionists were determined to return to Israel using the evil deeds as a raison d'etre. That Germany, not the Arabs, was the guilty part mattered not. Up until then large Jewish communities had flourished from Tunis to Teheran.

After 30 years of practice in Palestine the Brits could see that allowing the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine would be the planting of dragon's teeth. Unfortunately driven by Jewish political power in New York state the US sided with the Zionists.

Many devout orthodox Jews regard "Israel" as blasphemy with "Israel" being a liturgical concept only.

Add on a few more wars from 1948 - current and the inevitable result is a great many very angry young men who see as their inspiration the crossed swords of Abdul Aziz and the Wahabi not a thousand years of wisdom from the Hadith. They do not give a jot about notions of a multi cultural society in the UK or anywhere else. The current idea in the UK of somehow prevailing on the Islamic community to condemn and "de radicalise" young men and to be more "British" is unreal. Sure only a few will pick up a gun and go to Syria but that does nothing to change the overall attitude.

Will what the west calls fundamentalists terrorism cease ?

Given the witches brew that has been carefully brought to the boil by the western powers over the last century only with a degree of political will of which there is little evidence.

ISIL cannot be defeated by military means including "boots on the ground". It is more than prepared to carry out further terrorist acts in Europe where they get noticed unlike car bombs in Beirut.

Making more space for Islam in French society, "British Islam" a weird idea in a religion which like Catholicism is universal or it is nothing are sticking plaster non solutions.

The boil which cannot be lanced is the ongoing Israeli occupation of the West Bank.

So get used to more unexpected events, more state mass surveillance and restriction of democratic rights. And more blood on the street. Just possibly if the Democrats win the next US election they may be able to get Israel to pull in its horns far enough to at least change the direction of travel.

fwiw I have close Islamic friends in the Gulf, Iran and London while my biz partner for many years in Paris was of the Jewish faith. I just wish I could say kadish for him. So don't throw rocks at me. My friends despair of the future.

The denial of religion and its replacement by atheism as demanded by Dawkins and others is a denial of human will. Simply setting up atheism as a de facto religion is absurd.

Jesus is a recognised prophet in Islam.
As Islam was founded in (our) 7th Century, Jesus was a Christian.
There is quite a bit of the New Testament contained in the Quran, for example, dressing modestly - that's both men and women.

There are many different 'branches' of Islam, with slightly different translations of religious laws etc, like there are in Christianity.

Personally, I'd not so much as blame any religion, as the 'translators' - like priests :-( Humans for whom power equals corruption and a means of control.

I would like to see an organisation attempting to set up an atheist state worldwide.

Religion has a lot to answer for :-(

Makes you wonder, don't it just .
Wasn`t Jesus one of their recognized prophets too?
So what religion was Jesus at that time, Islamic? Jewish?
He certainly could not have been a Christian.

An 'Islamic State' is where there is a type of government, in which the primary basis for government is Islamic religious law (sharia). Under Sharia law, people live under a strict moral and legal regime.
But, like the Bible, it all comes down to interpretation!

They're not all like that!

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/islamic-history-is-full-of-free-thinkers--but-recent-attempts-to-suppress-critical-thought-are-verging-on-the-absurd-9993777.html

The answer is Yes Ann, they tried it before Hence the Crusades,that was murderous too.

can anyone explain to me what the ultimate aim is of this organisation? are they wishing to turn the whole globe Islamic? what will it take for them to stop this wholesale murder?