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Originally Posted by Alexander the Grape
boo boo, have you read the Qur'an? I haven't, and I don't think you have either. From what I've heard, though, from people who have actually read it, it seems like it is as self-contradicting as the Bible. Therefore, not all Muslims hold those beliefs that you are bashing "Muslim politics" for. Just as not all Christians are radical fundamentalists, neither are all Muslims. Some Christians are pro-homosexuality and pro-abortion, while others are not. If you talk to most Muslims living in the United States, you will find that they probably don't believe women are property, just as most Christians don't (even though the Bible says that).
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And these are the former kind of Christians I am talking about. They avoid what the bible clearly states, which is that killing human beings and homosexuality are sins.
I haven't read the Koran as a whole, because having read one boring religious text book is bad enough. I still have a fairly good idea of what Muslims generally believe, many of these beliefs arent too different from christians, only their beliefs about capital punishment and sin are much more strict and conservative.
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What? Yes they should, this is a democracy.
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Yes, a Democracy, and religious influence on politics should have a limit, our GOP is for the most part bought and paid for by the Christian right, and they have quite a hold on congress, even now that the Democrats have taken over the HOR, the Senate still has many Christians on its payroll, and vice versa. The only branch of our goverment where evangelicals don't have a strong influence is the Judiciary (thank god). My main concern about our GOP is that America is not too far from becoming a Theocracy. And right now the Republican presidential candidates are doing the best they can to win back the Evangelical right.
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Yes, this has to do with the Iraq war, because boo boo seems to be implying that just because Islam has the potential for sexism and homophobia (just like Christianity does) Muslims in the Middle East shouldn't be allowed to govern themselves.
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Thats not at all what I said, I'm saying that they have a strong religious bias, and this is what prevents democracy from working in the middle east, and this is a problem we're trying to solve in Iraq.
Muslims in the east have the right to govern themselves, but a lot of them don't know how democracy works, because they were born into theocracy, thats really all they know. And guess what? We're
trying to show them how to do it in Iraq. I guess thats a really bad thing we're doing, right?
And lest we forget, Moderates are afraid to speak out on such matters because of the peer pressure they get from extremists. You really need to do your homework if you think the Bush administration is completely responsable for everything that has went wrong in Iraq.
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Obviously the elections in Iraq have proven that democracy is elusive in the Middle East. I don't think us staying there will in any way be able to change that. We tried to establish a democracy, it didn't work, sending more troops and staying there longer isn't going to magically fix that.
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It didn't work because its still
in the works, you're not even giving it a chance.
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I've never heard any "lefty" say anything close to that. But I don't think an Islamic theocracy is worse than a Christian theocracy. They are both equally horrible.
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A Christian theocracy would never so bad to the point that they would have their policemen prevent young girls from leaving a burning schoolhouse because they don't have veils on.
Which is the case in Saudi Arabia. Can't you not at least try to see where I'm getting at?
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I'd be interested in reading the Qur'an, because it seems to be strikingly similar to the Bible. Of course, if I check it out at my library I will have FBI agents tapping my phone and ****.
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Now you're just being ridiculous.
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Ok, I have a lot more to say, but I've already typed way too much. Currently with the Iraq war we are ****ed either way. Problems will happen if we leave, but they're happening while we're there, and to a greater magnitude. A lot of the violence is happening because we are there
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I see it getting even worse if we leave, because its gotten to the point where they are more at war with each other than with us. And if we leave they will have something new to get pissed off about, and it really will be with us. You expect them to automatically forgive us for invading if we leave? That if we leave its all gonna be strawberries and daisies when it comes to our relations with Iraq?
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and I don't think we'll ever get it under control. Therefore, we should pull out before we just cause more problems, since we aren't doing any good right now. And that whole "pulling out will damage our reputation" thing is crap.
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What I meant by that was our reputation with
them, the extremists. If we leave now it will come back to bite us in the ass, I
garantee it.
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Why the hell is our reputation worth the lives of thousands of US soldiers and even more Iraqi civilians?
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Because worsening our reputation with middle eastern countries who are developing nuclear weapons like Iraq and Syria will put even
more at risk.
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And like the Unfan said, our reputation was ****ed the moment we invaded Iraq when most of the world told us not to. A reputation doesn't count for ****, either way.
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Thats where you are completely wrong, in foreign affairs, reputation is everything.
Everything.
Because our reputation influences what other countries think of us, and as a result it influences how these countries will treat us, and thats going to influence how we treat them, etc.
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I thank you for not using the whole "if we leave the terrorists will follow us home" line that the conservatives love, because that is obviously total bull****.
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Yeah, they're
already here.