[quote] The Hindu caste system [wikipedia.org]. This system exists and is operational in many parts of india. [/quote]
The article lead states:
Although generally identified with Hinduism, the caste system was also observed among followers of other religions in the Indian subcontinent, including some groups of Muslims and Christians
In the 9th century, 500 years before Europeans started arguing whether the world was round, Al-Battani and his ilk calculated the circumference of the Earth at 40,253km. Correct to within 200km!
Eratosthenes' measurement was more accurate, was several centuries prior to al-Batani's, and was also made in the Middle East (by riding on horseback from Aswan to Alexandria in Egypt during the summer solstice, actually).
Al-Jabr [wikipedia.org] is the Arab mathematician who discovered (or invented, whichever way you lean on that topic) algebra. It is still named after him.
His name wasn't "Al-Jabr". His name was al-Khwarzim (as in "the guy from Khwarzim, the Persian kingdom that Chengiz Khan pwned some decades later)
Al'Jabr is from the title of his book (al-Kitaab fi Hisaab al-jabr wa'l Muqabla).
Al-Khwarzim may have written the Hisaab-Kitaab for algebra, but Aryabhata in India had discovered many of those results long before Al-Khwarzim had.
[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aryabhata[/url]
Hey, history gets written by those on top at any point, which at the time were the Arab imperialists who stole India's numeral system and called it "Arabic".
At this moment they *might* be savage, but the lovely christians killed off other peoples (yes, peoples) by the thousands, and some are still doing so today, under the banner of religion.
Compared to the hundreds of millions that the Muslims have butchered over the centuries in Africa, Afghanistan, India, Indonesia?
The Hindu's despise a large chunk of their own people and use them as serfs for the sake of their religion.
Not as a matter of state law. One of those "serfs" was India's president.
The "orthodox" jews in Israel make it a sport to starve out an entire people because their religion tells them it's their chunk of land.
Most of Israel is not orthodox, or religious for that matter. Israel has open gay bars, and is the only middle eastern country with full LGBT rights. These guys sound "orthodox" to you? The primary conflicts there are nationalistic, with religion playing only a periphereal role.
You Americans have some bizarre orientalist ideas that everything in Asia is motivated by religion. Simply not true.
The animist people who listen to shamans in black Africa are hunting down and chopping apart albino blacks because they are thought to have magical properties.
Sucks to be them, for sure. Still, the death toll is hardly in the millions there. Compare with the 1971 Bangladesh genocide by Muslims (3 million dead for that one alone).
In conclusion, religion is just plain and simple evil disguised in a robe with a funny hat (why do they all need funny hats to make their statement??)
Fair enough. However, you make the classic fallacy of moral equivalence here. All religions are indeed bad but they are not equally bad. Some are worse than others.
You are missing the point. The Arbitration Act only allows Sharia courts, Jewish courts, or some form of secular arbitration, to apply if both parties agree to it. If you are a non-muslim and you consent to have your case judged according to Sharia law then you get what you deserve for crass stupidity.
You're not seeing the bigger picture. This whole voluntary Sharia Law thing is just a wedge to be used to muscle in more Sharia law, eventually culminating in an ever-expanding Islamic ghetto in the UK where Islamic law abrogates British law. It has happened countless times in other countries and at other times.
People who immigrate to other countries should conform to the laws of that country, not bring their backward cultural and religious baggage with them. It's just the rank arrogance of the Islamic leadership and aggressive collectivist ethnocentrism of the Muslim world that makes them do this.
Try being an immigrant in the UAE and claiming that you want to follow secular laws instead of their Islamic Sharia+Feudal monarchy and your hand will be cut off.
BTW are these guys still around? I read somewhere that they split up. Is the larger Islamofascist Jamaat-e-Islami in Pakistan supporting them with expat funds? I haven't been following Afghanistan much these last few months (too busy with Pakistan, where the Taliban seem to have moved and set up shop), but I do remember that the Afghan-Tajik tailor in my old neighbourhood loved to diss the Jamiat-Islami some years back. They kidnapped his son and forcibly recruited him into their rural death squads (killing people they thought were Soviet Collaborators etc.).
Not as bad as it sounds http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7233040.stm as you can see other religions can also pass judgements upon small non-criminal sectors of the law meanwhile all criminal matters are reserved for the UK's state courts.
Not the same thing. While Jewish law and Islamic law may have some nominal similarities, the main difference is that Jewish law only applies to Jews, not gentiles, whereas Islamic Sharia Law is a strategy created specifically to oppress non-Muslims in Islamic land quite brutally.
Issues with Jewish courts are best left within the Jewish community for the orthodox and reformist Jews to hash out. It doesn't affect any of the rest of us per se.
Extremely unlikely. Most of the Chinese students at my University are ferociously ethnocentric about their government, and immunize it from criticism using some pretty nasty hesperophobic bile.
In fact, their justifications for China's deprivations in Tibet are astoundingly similar to 19th century European Orientalism and Colonialism (apparently, the Tibetans are "uncivilized savages who eat people and drink blood" and the Chinese are only trying to "civilize them" by taking away their land, ethnically cleansing them in droves and bilking their natural resources to feed the Chinese economy).
But they haven't been so stupid as to say Hindi bankers and Jews planned it.
They do say these things. Amaresh Misra, a major ideologue for the Communist Party, even published this ludicrously anti-Indian/antisemitic conspiracy theory in Communist party mouthpiece:
Sorry, I got the chronology wrong. My mistake. However, her government and several of her boy-toys in said government were indicted by the courts over the years, going back to the Allahabad High Court in 1975 itself (though they couldn't do much about it when the women effectively seized power).
I'm disturbed by this. I believe the Internet should be a place where anyone can say anything. This will only increase anonymous blogging. On the other hand, I would be very hesitant to trash the judiciary as it's one of the few pillars of Indian society that is keeping corrupt politicians from doing whatever the hell they want.
Indian judiciary is independent of government. Indian supreme court even went so far as to indict the government under Indira Gandhi when she declared emergency and suspended the constitution in 1984.
Naturally the government isn't taking this lying down. They have, apparently having spent their school history classes smoking behind the bike sheds, recruited a brutal right-wing militia to put down the communist uprising.
This claim is a complete pantload of bullshit. You've been smoking whatever Ganja the naxalite-Communist terrorists have been feeding you. The NHRC has long since debunked these absurd conspiracy theories. SJ is privately funded. To be sure, they have sympathizers in government, but their money mainly comes from private donations from the local landlords etc., much like Ranvir Sena in Bihar.
I'll bet you believe (like many Communists in India have propounded) that the recent Mumbai terror attacks were part of a secret conspiracy between Hindu bankers and the Jews, right?
The Communist-controlled Indian media has glorified the Maoists and demonized their opponents, but the fact remains that the Maoists are a China-funded terrorist group that actively seeks to destroy India and depopulate the North-eastern states as a vanguard for a possible Chinese invasion from Tibet. Numerous documents were released by the FOIA division of the CIA that showed how Moist militants received financial support from China and infiltrated the Indian Army in the 1962 Sino-India war.
The CIA has already provided evidence as to how Indian Communists, underthe instructions of their Chinese paymasters, infiltrated the Indian Army during the Sino-Indian war and betray military secrets to Beijing.
#CPI(M) [Communist Party of India Marxist] heavyweight HK Surjeet influenced by Communist Soviet Russia to setup an underground organization #CPI(M) did proceed to recruit a secret organization within the Indian Army. #China and Soviet Russia both insisted that the CPI(M) must develop a standby apparatus capable of armed resistance, while intensifying penetration of Indian Military forces. #With the People's Liberation Army now present along the Indian Border the Indian Party had a channel of support for Armed Operations and a potential "liberator" in the event of mass uprisings - 13 Sept 1959 #4 powerful radio sets had been installed in the office of the China Review in Calcutta to listen to broadcasts from Beijing #Chinese Financial Subsidies to sections of the CPI(M) particularly the left faction strongholds in West Bengal #A foreign supply base was now available for the underground organizations with the Chinese occupation of Tibet and other frontier areas. #Letter asking for collaboration in Indian underground organization work aimed at an eventual revolution, because China has a border with India and can provide arms and supplies. #Also Jaipal Singh, head of the illegal organization within the Indian Army decided to reactivate his organization in 1961 following the hard left faction gaining control of the party.
In addition, the Communist Party of India have successfully carried out several pogroms and genocides against Hindus and Tibetan refugees in India, particularly during the 70's and 80's (read up on the Nanoor genocide and Morichjhanpi genocides sometime, the Communist controlled Indian media will never discuss these things, of course), all as part of a Trotskyist strategy of maintaining a state of "permanent revolution" (the most recent one being the Nandigram SEZ genocide), all at the behest of their Chinese paymasters.
China has also aggressively sponsored the terrorist Naxalite Communist terror movement in India by financing major Communist radicals (ethnic Bengali Bolshevists
Now I have ZERO clue what the law says regarding a Hindu Temple setting up shop in Israel, but that's WAY above my pay grade. If you want real explanations, and not a very lay explanation on Slashdot, consult your local Orthodox Rabbi.
There was a Jewish-Hindu interfaith thingie in new Delhi in 2007
The Hindu/Jewish summit set the tone for interfaith collaboration. The "Protocol of Cooperation" -- a declaration signed by Rabbi Yona Metzger and Swami Dayananda Saraswati, the convener of The Hindu Dharma Acharya Sabha -- primarily acknowledges the shared values of two of the oldest religions in the world which both believe in the one Supreme Being who is the ultimate source of reality and creation, and condemns all forms of religious violence. The summit agreed to constitute a standing committee on Hindu-Jewish relations.
Swami Dayananda Saraswati noted the "declaration will serve as a benchmark for others to follow and emulate, resulting in a better environment for all. I have always believed in peace-full co-existence. All religious traditions should respect common values and insist on compassion. Religious leaders bear the responsibility of leading their followers to a path of peace so that the world will become a safer place to live."
Lauding the efforts of The World Council of Religious Leaders (WCORL) who organized this summit, Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger said "though religious dialogues have increased recently, the Hindu-Jewish declaration is a significant move that highlights the necessity of expanding interfaith community.
For thousands of years we have marched on parallel causes and have now built bridges of cooperation between the two religions. Jews have lived in India for over 2000 years and have never been discriminated against. This is something unparalleled in human history".
The Jewish delegation included Rabbi David Rosen, former Chief Rabbi of Ireland and President of IJCIC, the International Jewish Committee that represents World Jewry in its relations with other world Religions, Oded Weiner, the director general of The Chief Rabbinate of Israel and over 10 International Jewish leaders. The Hindu participants included over 30 prominent heads of Hindu traditions from all over India.
The summit provided the framework for Jewish and Muslim leaders to meet and discuss the significant role religion could play in promoting peace in the Middle East. On Palestine, Metzger lamented that his community had dialogue only with moderate Muslim leaders with little power and influence. "So far efforts to engage other sections who command power have proved futile. But that doesn't mean we will end our efforts".
Also, I believe small diaspora Hindu denominations (Vaishnavites) and Brahma Kumaris people are already there in Tel Aviv, and they celebrate Janmashtami fairly openly.
I don't know what Orthodox Jewish positions are here. But I was watching an interfaith dialogue on NPR or someplace like that and an orthodox Jewish Rabbi was saying that they have no fundamental disagreements with henotheistic , monotheistic and nontheistic Hindu denominations because their practices can be interpreted as conforming to noachide laws. Plus their complete lack of antisemitism classifies them as righteous.
I'm not saying I disagree with you, but why is it that whenever Muslims are criticized this way, an entire army of apologists and propagandists pounces upon the criticizer with accusations of bias and bigotry, but when Jews, Christians or Hindus are attacked in this way, it's the same apologists who cheer the attackers on? All this even though the one major thing that Christians, Jews, Buddhists , Hindus and even minority Muslim sects like Ahmadiyyas have in common is that they all either have been or are being persecuted by the Sunni-Shia Muslim hegemony (Jews in Iran, Hindu minorities in Pakistan and Bangladesh, Christians in East Timor, Buddhas of Bamiyan).
Methinks some kind of Stockholm's syndrome is at work here.
..about this whole affair. The Muslim passengers were headed for a "religious conference" (Wahhabi madrassa?) when they got into this incident. Promptly afterwards,they were "represented" by two very shady organizations, the 'Muslim Public Affairs Council' (A Wahhabist front) and the 'Council of American-Islamic relations' (who have links to HAMAS). If it were a moderate organization like the "California center for Islamic pluralism" or something similar that was representing them then I would be more sympathetic, but two militant Islamist hate groups suddenly muster up the funds to "represent" them? It sounds like a planned publicity/propaganda stunt meant to conjure up sympathy.
At the end of the day, we killed more of them than they killed of us. We are the ones who are whacked out, and very few of us even realize it.
Really? "We" killed more of "them" than "they" killed in the Armenian genocide, the Pontic Greek genocide, the Bangladesh genocide, the Wandhama massacre, the Shiraz riots, the Noakhali massacre, the Moplah massacre, the East Timor massacres, the Darfur genocide etc. etc. ?
Did you actually read the article? The National Liberation Front of Tripura and the Lord's Resistance Army are the most nefarious of the Christoterrorists, and they are emphatically not white!
Slashdot Mirror
I stand corrected. Thanks.
Wasn't coffee from South America?
In Islam, apostasy is punishable by death.
Is Islam a cult?
[quote]
The Hindu caste system [wikipedia.org]. This system exists and is operational in many parts of india.
[/quote]
The article lead states:
Although generally identified with Hinduism, the caste system was also observed among followers of other religions in the Indian subcontinent, including some groups of Muslims and Christians
There is also another article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste_system_among_Indian_Christians/
SO nice bit of selective obscurantism there. Also see "Curse of Ham"
In the 9th century, 500 years before Europeans started arguing whether the world was round, Al-Battani and his ilk calculated the circumference of the Earth at 40,253km. Correct to within 200km!
Eratosthenes' measurement was more accurate, was several centuries prior to al-Batani's, and was also made in the Middle East (by riding on horseback from Aswan to Alexandria in Egypt during the summer solstice, actually).
Al-Jabr [wikipedia.org] is the Arab mathematician who discovered (or invented, whichever way you lean on that topic) algebra. It is still named after him.
His name wasn't "Al-Jabr". His name was al-Khwarzim (as in "the guy from Khwarzim, the Persian kingdom that Chengiz Khan pwned some decades later)
Al'Jabr is from the title of his book (al-Kitaab fi Hisaab al-jabr wa'l Muqabla).
Al-Khwarzim may have written the Hisaab-Kitaab for algebra, but Aryabhata in India had discovered many of those results long before Al-Khwarzim had.
[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aryabhata[/url]
Hey, history gets written by those on top at any point, which at the time were the Arab imperialists who stole India's numeral system and called it "Arabic".
At this moment they *might* be savage, but the lovely christians killed off other peoples (yes, peoples) by the thousands, and some are still doing so today, under the banner of religion.
Compared to the hundreds of millions that the Muslims have butchered over the centuries in Africa, Afghanistan, India, Indonesia?
The Hindu's despise a large chunk of their own people and use them as serfs for the sake of their religion.
Not as a matter of state law. One of those "serfs" was India's president.
The "orthodox" jews in Israel make it a sport to starve out an entire people because their religion tells them it's their chunk of land.
Most of Israel is not orthodox, or religious for that matter. Israel has open gay bars, and is the only middle eastern country with full LGBT rights. These guys sound "orthodox" to you? The primary conflicts there are nationalistic, with religion playing only a periphereal role.
You Americans have some bizarre orientalist ideas that everything in Asia is motivated by religion. Simply not true.
The animist people who listen to shamans in black Africa are hunting down and chopping apart albino blacks because they are thought to have magical properties.
Sucks to be them, for sure. Still, the death toll is hardly in the millions there. Compare with the 1971 Bangladesh genocide by Muslims (3 million dead for that one alone).
In conclusion, religion is just plain and simple evil disguised in a robe with a funny hat (why do they all need funny hats to make their statement??)
Fair enough. However, you make the classic fallacy of moral equivalence here. All religions are indeed bad but they are not equally bad. Some are worse than others.
You are missing the point. The Arbitration Act only allows Sharia courts, Jewish courts, or some form of secular arbitration, to apply if both parties agree to it. If you are a non-muslim and you consent to have your case judged according to Sharia law then you get what you deserve for crass stupidity.
You're not seeing the bigger picture. This whole voluntary Sharia Law thing is just a wedge to be used to muscle in more Sharia law, eventually culminating in an ever-expanding Islamic ghetto in the UK where Islamic law abrogates British law. It has happened countless times in other countries and at other times.
People who immigrate to other countries should conform to the laws of that country, not bring their backward cultural and religious baggage with them. It's just the rank arrogance of the Islamic leadership and aggressive collectivist ethnocentrism of the Muslim world that makes them do this.
Try being an immigrant in the UAE and claiming that you want to follow secular laws instead of their Islamic Sharia+Feudal monarchy and your hand will be cut off.
Jamiat Islami
BTW are these guys still around? I read somewhere that they split up. Is the larger Islamofascist Jamaat-e-Islami in Pakistan supporting them with expat funds? I haven't been following Afghanistan much these last few months (too busy with Pakistan, where the Taliban seem to have moved and set up shop), but I do remember that the Afghan-Tajik tailor in my old neighbourhood loved to diss the Jamiat-Islami some years back. They kidnapped his son and forcibly recruited him into their rural death squads (killing people they thought were Soviet Collaborators etc.).
Not as bad as it sounds http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7233040.stm as you can see other religions can also pass judgements upon small non-criminal sectors of the law meanwhile all criminal matters are reserved for the UK's state courts.
Not the same thing. While Jewish law and Islamic law may have some nominal similarities, the main difference is that Jewish law only applies to Jews, not gentiles, whereas Islamic Sharia Law is a strategy created specifically to oppress non-Muslims in Islamic land quite brutally.
Issues with Jewish courts are best left within the Jewish community for the orthodox and reformist Jews to hash out. It doesn't affect any of the rest of us per se.
There is more chicken tikka masala in Austin than there is in London.
Having lived in both cities...
This is how you bring human rights to China
Extremely unlikely. Most of the Chinese students at my University are ferociously ethnocentric about their government, and immunize it from criticism using some pretty nasty hesperophobic bile.
In fact, their justifications for China's deprivations in Tibet are astoundingly similar to 19th century European Orientalism and Colonialism (apparently, the Tibetans are "uncivilized savages who eat people and drink blood" and the Chinese are only trying to "civilize them" by taking away their land, ethnically cleansing them in droves and bilking their natural resources to feed the Chinese economy).
But they haven't been so stupid as to say Hindi bankers and Jews planned it.
They do say these things. Amaresh Misra, a major ideologue for the Communist Party, even published this ludicrously anti-Indian/antisemitic conspiracy theory in Communist party mouthpiece:
http://www.countercurrents.org/misra031208.htm
Sorry, I got the chronology wrong. My mistake. However, her government and several of her boy-toys in said government were indicted by the courts over the years, going back to the Allahabad High Court in 1975 itself (though they couldn't do much about it when the women effectively seized power).
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/Chawla_was_indicted_for_Emergency_excesses/rssarticleshow/4058011.cms
http://www.boloji.com/plainspeak/015.htm
You're a nutcase.
I'm disturbed by this. I believe the Internet should be a place where anyone can say anything. This will only increase anonymous blogging. On the other hand, I would be very hesitant to trash the judiciary as it's one of the few pillars of Indian society that is keeping corrupt politicians from doing whatever the hell they want.
Indian judiciary is independent of government. Indian supreme court even went so far as to indict the government under Indira Gandhi when she declared emergency and suspended the constitution in 1984.
Naturally the government isn't taking this lying down. They have, apparently having spent their school history classes smoking behind the bike sheds, recruited a brutal right-wing militia to put down the communist uprising.
This claim is a complete pantload of bullshit. You've been smoking whatever Ganja the naxalite-Communist terrorists have been feeding you. The NHRC has long since debunked these absurd conspiracy theories. SJ is privately funded. To be sure, they have sympathizers in government, but their money mainly comes from private donations from the local landlords etc., much like Ranvir Sena in Bihar.
I'll bet you believe (like many Communists in India have propounded) that the recent Mumbai terror attacks were part of a secret conspiracy between Hindu bankers and the Jews, right?
The Communist-controlled Indian media has glorified the Maoists and demonized their opponents, but the fact remains that the Maoists are a China-funded terrorist group that actively seeks to destroy India and depopulate the North-eastern states as a vanguard for a possible Chinese invasion from Tibet. Numerous documents were released by the FOIA division of the CIA that showed how Moist militants received financial support from China and infiltrated the Indian Army in the 1962 Sino-India war.
The CIA has already provided evidence as to how Indian Communists, underthe instructions of their Chinese paymasters, infiltrated the Indian Army during the Sino-Indian war and betray military secrets to Beijing.
http://www.foia.cia.gov/CPE/POLO/polo-07.pdf
http://www.foia.cia.gov/CPE/POLO/polo-08.pdf
http://www.foia.cia.gov/CPE/POLO/polo-09.pdf
http://www.foia.cia.gov/CPE/ESAU/esau-15.pdf
Highlights include:
#CPI(M) [Communist Party of India Marxist] heavyweight HK Surjeet influenced by Communist Soviet Russia to setup an underground organization
#CPI(M) did proceed to recruit a secret organization within the Indian Army.
#China and Soviet Russia both insisted that the CPI(M) must develop a standby apparatus capable of armed resistance, while intensifying penetration of Indian Military forces.
#With the People's Liberation Army now present along the Indian Border the Indian Party had a channel of support for Armed Operations and a potential "liberator" in the event of mass uprisings - 13 Sept 1959
#4 powerful radio sets had been installed in the office of the China Review in Calcutta to listen to broadcasts from Beijing
#Chinese Financial Subsidies to sections of the CPI(M) particularly the left faction strongholds in West Bengal
#A foreign supply base was now available for the underground organizations with the Chinese occupation of Tibet and other frontier areas.
#Letter asking for collaboration in Indian underground organization work aimed at an eventual revolution, because China has a border with India and can provide arms and supplies.
#Also Jaipal Singh, head of the illegal organization within the Indian Army decided to reactivate his organization in 1961 following the hard left faction gaining control of the party.
In addition, the Communist Party of India have successfully carried out several pogroms and genocides against Hindus and Tibetan refugees in India, particularly during the 70's and 80's (read up on the Nanoor genocide and Morichjhanpi genocides sometime, the Communist controlled Indian media will never discuss these things, of course), all as part of a Trotskyist strategy of maintaining a state of "permanent revolution" (the most recent one being the Nandigram SEZ genocide), all at the behest of their Chinese paymasters.
China has also aggressively sponsored the terrorist Naxalite Communist terror movement in India by financing major Communist radicals (ethnic Bengali Bolshevists
Now I have ZERO clue what the law says regarding a Hindu Temple setting up shop in Israel, but that's WAY above my pay grade. If you want real explanations, and not a very lay explanation on Slashdot, consult your local Orthodox Rabbi.
There was a Jewish-Hindu interfaith thingie in new Delhi in 2007
http://www.dailystaregypt.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=5788
The Hindu/Jewish summit set the tone for interfaith collaboration. The "Protocol of Cooperation" -- a declaration signed by Rabbi Yona Metzger and Swami Dayananda Saraswati, the convener of The Hindu Dharma Acharya Sabha -- primarily acknowledges the shared values of two of the oldest religions in the world which both believe in the one Supreme Being who is the ultimate source of reality and creation, and condemns all forms of religious violence. The summit agreed to constitute a standing committee on Hindu-Jewish relations.
Swami Dayananda Saraswati noted the "declaration will serve as a benchmark for others to follow and emulate, resulting in a better environment for all. I have always believed in peace-full co-existence. All religious traditions should respect common values and insist on compassion. Religious leaders bear the responsibility of leading their followers to a path of peace so that the world will become a safer place to live."
Lauding the efforts of The World Council of Religious Leaders (WCORL) who organized this summit, Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger said "though religious dialogues have increased recently, the Hindu-Jewish declaration is a significant move that highlights the necessity of expanding interfaith community.
For thousands of years we have marched on parallel causes and have now built bridges of cooperation between the two religions. Jews have lived in India for over 2000 years and have never been discriminated against. This is something unparalleled in human history".
The Jewish delegation included Rabbi David Rosen, former Chief Rabbi of Ireland and President of IJCIC, the International Jewish Committee that represents World Jewry in its relations with other world Religions, Oded Weiner, the director general of The Chief Rabbinate of Israel and over 10 International Jewish leaders. The Hindu participants included over 30 prominent heads of Hindu traditions from all over India.
The summit provided the framework for Jewish and Muslim leaders to meet and discuss the significant role religion could play in promoting peace in the Middle East. On Palestine, Metzger lamented that his community had dialogue only with moderate Muslim leaders with little power and influence. "So far efforts to engage other sections who command power have proved futile. But that doesn't mean we will end our efforts".
Also, I believe small diaspora Hindu denominations (Vaishnavites) and Brahma Kumaris people are already there in Tel Aviv, and they celebrate Janmashtami fairly openly.
http://www.wwrn.org/article.php?idd=6636&sec=28&con=35
I don't know what Orthodox Jewish positions are here. But I was watching an interfaith dialogue on NPR or someplace like that and an orthodox Jewish Rabbi was saying that they have no fundamental disagreements with henotheistic , monotheistic and nontheistic Hindu denominations because their practices can be interpreted as conforming to noachide laws. Plus their complete lack of antisemitism classifies them as righteous.
Well that's not really true...
Hint: Muslims did not build the Kaaba. The "appropriated" it.
Furthermore Hindus are the biggest supporters of Israel outside of the western world. You'd think that this would foster some mutual understanding...
Apparently not.
I'm not saying I disagree with you, but why is it that whenever Muslims are criticized this way, an entire army of apologists and propagandists pounces upon the criticizer with accusations of bias and bigotry, but when Jews, Christians or Hindus are attacked in this way, it's the same apologists who cheer the attackers on? All this even though the one major thing that Christians, Jews, Buddhists , Hindus and even minority Muslim sects like Ahmadiyyas have in common is that they all either have been or are being persecuted by the Sunni-Shia Muslim hegemony (Jews in Iran, Hindu minorities in Pakistan and Bangladesh, Christians in East Timor, Buddhas of Bamiyan).
Methinks some kind of Stockholm's syndrome is at work here.
..about this whole affair. The Muslim passengers were headed for a "religious conference" (Wahhabi madrassa?) when they got into this incident. Promptly afterwards ,they were "represented" by two very shady organizations, the 'Muslim Public Affairs Council' (A Wahhabist front) and the 'Council of American-Islamic relations' (who have links to HAMAS). If it were a moderate organization like the "California center for Islamic pluralism" or something similar that was representing them then I would be more sympathetic, but two militant Islamist hate groups suddenly muster up the funds to "represent" them? It sounds like a planned publicity/propaganda stunt meant to conjure up sympathy.
At the end of the day, we killed more of them than they killed of us. We are the ones who are whacked out, and very few of us even realize it.
Really? "We" killed more of "them" than "they" killed in the Armenian genocide, the Pontic Greek genocide, the Bangladesh genocide, the Wandhama massacre, the Shiraz riots, the Noakhali massacre, the Moplah massacre, the East Timor massacres, the Darfur genocide etc. etc. ?
Did you actually read the article? The National Liberation Front of Tripura and the Lord's Resistance Army are the most nefarious of the Christoterrorists, and they are emphatically not white!
So far no one has bothered me.
..unless you're white like John Walker Lindh
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Walker_Lindh