[ExI] Religions and violence

[Tomasz Rola]

On Fri, 30 Jul 2010, Adrian Tymes wrote:

> --- On Fri, 7/30/10, Tomasz Rola <rtomek at ceti.pl> wrote:
> > On Thu, 29 Jul 2010, John Clark
> > wrote:
> > > And as I've already stated many times, whenever an
> > Islamic apologist 
> > > tries to illustrate the glories of that civilization
> > they ALWAYS pick 
> > > examples from the eleventh or twelfth century, they
> > really have no 
> > > choice, they certainly couldn't find anything modern
> > to brag about. And 
> > > by modern I mean the last few centuries.
> > 
> > John, I think you are awesomly unfair. You do care about
> > being fair, don't 
> > you? Yet you seem to judge a culture by its last 100 years?
> > Maybe 50? This 
> > is simply unfair. Unless 100 years is all that culture has.
> 
> While I disagree with John's branding of all Muslims for the
> actions of some, I see his point here.  A culture is made up
> of those people who are alive today - few if any of whom, at
> this time, are older than 100 years of age, and most are far
> younger than that.
> 
> It is entirely fair to judge a living people by their own
> accomplishments.

Of course. This is exactly what I tried to do in my previous post. I have 
judged contemporary Islam and came to some conclusions, which might have 
been wrong because this is very deep and broad subject and I have lots to 
learn about it.

>  Within the past few decades, there have
> been some technological improvements, but there has also
> been the mass imposition and acceptance of tyranny with
> religious excuses.

You know, I see those guys as very stretched. They have come from medieval 
age to piloting jets in a decade or so. I'm not sure, maybe I am 
exagerrating a bit, but there is some stress in all this.

>  Compare, for instance, life under Iran's
> shah - a tinpot dictator installed as a byproduct of the
> Cold War, but one who was modernizing the country - to what
> the current regime has accomplished in its roughly 30 years
> of rule.

I find Iran to be interesting subject of study. I understand that they 
have been much more affected by war than Iraq. The social structure has 
been diverted, there is a lot more of young (or reatively young) people 
(2/3 under 30yo, omg...). Youngs are questioning by definition and maybe a 
number of them connects postwar mess (there is always postwar mess) with 
their revolutionary rulers. Also, they may be reluctant to accept 
revelations "from above".

Under shah, reforms would have been probably slowed down. Now, with all 
those youngsters boiling in the pot, ayatollahs have to be cool. But, 
maybe I am too optimistic :-).

Regards,
Tomasz Rola

--
** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature.      **
** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home    **
** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened...      **
**                                                                 **
** Tomasz Rola          mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com             **