On Wed January 11 2006 22:48, Kiran Jonnalagadda wrote: > could it not be that the region's rulers like to keep Islam > that way to maintain their stranglehold on oil resources?
I belive that "keeping Islam that way" is a great way of holding on to power in an oligarchy. The infuence in the West that those oligarchies/monarchs acquired due to oil wealth made sure that the West did nothing to to touch or change those monarchs in the manner that the West tried to do in Vietnam for example. The quid pro quo seems (to me) to have been: "I give you oil, you give me money, I plough the money back into your businesses and you don't touch me or the Islam that keeps me in power" So you have the West screwing itself giving space to any and every type of kinky behaviour and trying to portray all that as "liberal, tolearant, secular" while the same West shuts up and does not even emit a feeble chirp when people are asked not to wear a cross or carry a Bible (leave alone the Bhagwad Gita) into Saudi Arabia. Europe is screwing itself. Only by producing enough children can there be a future. If Europe does not produce kids because incomes and lifestyles are better without kids then Europe as we know it will die out. It will be taken over by those who are less shy about reproducing. In the case of Europe - they seem to be Arabs, Turks and in the case of oh-so-liberal Sweden Pakistanis. shiv
