On Wed, Dec 01, 2004 at 08:46:16PM -0500, William Ballard wrote: > On Thu, Dec 02, 2004 at 01:25:36AM +0000, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote: > > The Christian Bible ought to be OK by most Islamic scholars - it's the > > Crusader history that has caused most of the problems - but you
I stand by this one :) If you look at the history books: Frederick Barbarossa had a multi-cultural court in Sicily with Christian, Islamic and Jewish scholars around. Arabic Spain had no particular problem with Jews or Christians. The Koran suggests some degree of religious tolerance for "peoples of the Book" as I understand it. The Bible text is therefore probably relatively unproblematic: apostasy from Islam, however, is a serious offence and any perceived attempt at conversion may be poorly viewed. Look at the history of the sack of Jerusalem in 1099 from the chronicles of the Second Crusade - people boasting of wading in blood - and you'll see that at least some of the anti-Christian/Crusader hatred was well founded in fact at the time. > > After 9/11 I saw a fellow named Tariq Ramadan on C-Span, and one of his > books was the history of Occidental peoples written from an Oriental > perspective -- in other words, what they thought of us "way back then." > > At the time the Crusades were a border skirmish of only middling > interest. Most of Islam hardly knew about them. It wasn't until the > Ottoman empire in the 1800s and attempts at inciting nationalistic fury > to support various pan-Arab movements that they got trumped up into such > a big huge deal. At the time 1000-1300, "Islam" was fighting on several fronts - Spain was still a divided country but the Arabs were being pushed back, Constantinople was resisting Islamic influence - but the Islamic religion and sphere of influence was still growing. In this context, the Crusades were just another war at the time. > > A lot of the minor princes made friends with the invaders. After all, > we have Christian Syria and Christian Lebanon out of it. > Look at the history books. Lebanon/Syria/Palestine/Spain were all part of the Roman Empire / Byzantine Empire at one time or another. Christianity in Syria goes back to the second century CE. "Christian Syria/Lebanon" just remained multi-faith/multi-cultural. > It's really shocking to hear what kind of mouthpieces some people are on > the left for what some shady egyptian cleric in 1910 wrote. > This rant from me is relatively apolitical :) Apropos the situation currently in force in various countries round the world and each countries national restrictions: it is appropriate for citizens and non-citizens to obey the law of the country they are in. If you are in Iran/Saudi Arabia/Myanmar/<any other country> you should behave with respect and live appropriately by that country's laws as far as this is possible. The Debian Project can't legislate for <random country>: if, as Michelle Konzac says, nudity and pornography is viewed very severely in Iran - that is a matter for the Iranians using Debian in Iran. If that means producing a partial mirror / remastering CD's to meet local conditions and disseminating Debian in accordance with local laws and customs, so much the better. That's a matter for local Debian users to manage and they are best placed to advise. If <random package> can't be sent to Iran/<random country> the Debian maintainer should perhaps place an entry in the package description explaining why. The GPG entry has something of this sort in it, explaining that mere possession of cryptography may be illegal in some countries. > > -- > To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] > with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]