Mike, whether I say 'Britain versus Germany', or 'Germany versus Britain' makes no difference regarding whether I believe Hitler or Churchill was responsible for the war.
Yes, I take your point about Ariel Sharon. No, I didn't say the loss of civil liberties in America was no big deal. I think it's a very big deal, which is why I referred to it. Equally, I think the absence of civil liberaties in Iraq is a very big deal. To say "Islam versus the West" is not racist, as Colin said. Islam is not a race. If I oppose aspects of Judaism, that doesn't make me an anti-Semite. If I deplore Christianity, I'm not anti-white or anti-West. Pulling out the race card doesn't advance the discussion. This is a conflict between the modern world and the ancient world, between religious intolerance (whether represented by Islam or any other religion) and. . . whatever you want to call the West.....a progressive liberating ideology, in my view, an ideology that questions itself and is self-examining. I can't respect an ideology that suppresses women, where there are no gay rights, no rights for the mentally ill or the physically disabled, where menstruating women are regarded as filthy and irrational, where women can only report a rape if there are two male witnesses, where we can be beheaded for not covering our faces or stoned if our husbands think we committed adultery. Why would anyone in the West, where we place a high vaue on individual human rights, pay lip service to this bullshit? Granted, there are individual Moslems who don't believe these things should happen, just as there are individual Christians who don't believe in the Virgin Birth. But Islam as practised by the overwhelming majority of countries in which it's the ruling ideology does not respect human rights at all. And it's important to remember that Islam is not the Arabs. I hope one day that the Arabs will rise up against this or any other religion, and then they'll have a chance of becoming a great people. Sarah At 12:15 PM +0100 12/23/2002, mike pritchard wrote: >Whoa, hold on just a moment, here. Since when did this war become >'Islam versus the West'? Could this war not equally be called 'The >West versus Islam'? As a journalist you should be aware of the >newspeak elements inherent in this field, especially on the >Israel-Palestine situation, but also on anything related to Iraq. >Question: What made these people in Lebanon decide to launch suicide >attacks? Whim? Folly? High spirits? Or perhaps a reaction to earlier >events? Maybe we should look at these events before making such a >statement. Perhaps a good place to look for anti-Islam acts is the >career of Ariel Sharon, a veteran of over 50 years of atrocities >against the Palestine people.
