[extropy-chat] Whoa! / Wafa Sultan

Amara Graps amara at amara.com
Mon Jul 31 06:14:09 UTC 2006


Eliezer S. Yudkowsky sentience at pobox.com :
>It says a lot about the world as it exists today, that the most stirring
>and passionate interview I've ever seen on television, aired on
>Al-Jazeera, and could probably never air in the US.

I don't watch TV often here, but it is the kind of thing that you would
find on this side of the Atlantic. But why wouldn't you eventually find
such a debate there on U.S. TV? It _could_ fit the agenda of those who
want to portray all Muslims as extremists.

I think that one would have to understand the larger context to
understand what she is saying. While much of what she is saying is
true (the part about the wholesale contributions of Jewish scientists is
wrong, however), there were no words in her criticism for the wide
spectrum of practices and lifestyles of Muslims; they are not all
fundamentalists, which is the type that she was specifically discussing.
She also glossed over the practices of Israel's army. There are, in
fact,  many places where multiple religions cohabit (yes, more
comfortably than others) in the same space and time with Islam.

Here is a snapshot of a neighborhood in Istanbul that I took while I was
taking a walk along one of the ancient walls that surround the city last
March. Moms watching their kids playing in a playground on a late
afternoon. Please note the mix of dress of the mothers- a range of some
very conservative Muslims to some secular/not religious. This is normal
for Turkey, India, ...

http://www.amara.com/playground.jpg

I suggest to visit the Aya Sofia mosque in Istanbul for a graphic
example of the cohabitation: the words of Allah are almost touching the
picture of the Madonna and Child in the dome of the mosque (not seen
together in this picture, but they are):

http://www.traveladventures.org/continents/europe/ayasofia.shtml

And you'll find such a situation scattered all over the rest of Turkey,
as well: huge numbers of pagan archeological relics from Greek and Roman
times, old Christian churches (mostly preserved and turned into museums,
but a few are still in use too) in Cappadochia neighborhoods, which also
have a mosque on every corner.

Amara




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