The Whole Al Jazeera & Wafa Sultan Controversy

In Culture Arabia, Opinion on March 9, 2008 at 9:56 am

Last Tuesday, Al Jazeera’s The Opposite Direction with Faisal Al Qasem hosted Wafa Sultan and an Islamic cleric to discuss the reprinting of offensive cartoons of the prophet Mohammad. Sultan is pretty well-known for her strong anti-Islam opinions, which obviously made her an ideal participant in the fight club called The Opposite Direction, especially since she was up against an Islamic cleric.

Sultan expressed herself her usual way, and many Muslims watching the show were infuriated by her lack of diplomacy and insulting Islam and its figures. Then people demanded an apology of the station, Al Jazeera, because they accused the station of supporting anti-Islamism. Al Jazeera apologized, and the right wing everywhere rejoiced because it found another reason to diss Muslims and Arabs.

My opinion is as follows:

Al Jazeera had it coming. It really, really had it coming. A show like The Opposite Direction in particular should have been stopped a long time ago. It does not encourage dialogue but cockfighting. Al Qasem sits extreme opposites on one table and fuels their disputes. He ignites them if they calm, and he encourages screaming and name-calling under the guise of conversation. This show has always been on my hate list, and now I hate it more.

Since The Opposite Direction has FINALLY crossed some public red line, the show is now under scrutiny. The ‘normal’ people who used to watch it and cheer Al Qasem on are now rebuking him and saying the show is really no good. Unfortunately, they are not doing that for the right reasons (show achieves nothing but grow resentment, stupid fighting, etc.) but they are doing it anyway. They are also projecting what one show did (which they loved in the past, remember) on an entire station that they statistically still very much love.

Saying that Al Jazeera supports anti-Islamism is an old-new conspiracy theory which until now stood ungrounded. The Opposite Direction episode with Sultan gave reason for more people to believe it. Their logic is skewed, but so was their taste in the first place to admire a show like that.

Sultan is not a very diplomatic speaker when asked about Islam. I personally do not like her way of handling issues, and I think she does have certain biases and is not entirely fair. On the other hand, Al Qasem already knew this about her as he had hosted her previously and her videos are all over the internet. I am glad that finally Al Qasem received a wake-up call, albeit for all the wrong reasons.

What makes me sad is not what Sultan said, or what Al Qasem did, or anything related to Al Jazeera. What makes me sad is how some Arab people easily distort facts and call others ‘anti-Islam’ as simple as that. What’s Al Jazeera to do if it was hosting a debate about the prophet cartoons? Host two Islamic clerics and that’s it? It’s a ‘debate’ so it should have two or more different opinions! Why is the station itself being called anti-Islam? Must it always conform to one boring line of reporting taking the side of the majority?

I think part of the reason why some people easily accuse others when they are not 100% pleased with their ideas lies in our education and in the pressures that Arabs live under these days. Our education, for the most part, does not offer the ‘counter argument’ and if it does, it purposefully marginalizes it in favor of the more popular. The pressures on Arabs and Muslims in this day and age make them hypersensitive to anything foreign, as is to be expected, much like what happened in the United Stated after 9/11.

I find it fascinating how in this part of the world, people can still unite (almost) for a cause and can protest and make demands. It is more fascinating to me how they project their current internal problems on external threats, which may or may not be relevant. The uproars caused by the prophet cartoons and now Wafa Sultan have far outreached those caused, if any, by governmental corruption, high prices, bad planning, gender inequality, and any other day-to-day obstacle to progress in Jordan and the region. It makes me wonder about our real priorities because the heights these actions and reactions have reached are truly ridiculous.

Meh. The world is such a disappointing place with plenty of grey. What a sad, sad place to be.

▶ View 99 Comments

Ok, my opinion is as follows:

 
<ol style="MARGIN-TOP: 0in" type="1">
<li class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in">Al jazeera was wrong by hosting that Wafa Sultan, because she never argues to solve a problem or reach a truth, she just curse on Arabs and Muslims and desecrate on God and the prophet.</li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in">Actually I never liked the show at all, it’s all about fighting as you said.</li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in">Generalizing the ‘anti-Islam’ claim on the whole channel was also wrong.</li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in">It’s normal, logical, desired and supposed to have a big fuss about any attempt to any insult of the prophet or Islam, it’s not a sort of freedom of speech by no means to curse prophets and religions, and it is a red line no one should exceed.</li></ol>
(Insulting is not freedom of speech, you can’t call someone’s righteous mother a bitch for example)!
<ol style="MARGIN-TOP: 0in" type="1" start="5">
<li class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in">“…have far outreached those caused, if any, by governmental corruption…” well to me that is not fascinating at all, people are not that united nor forward when it comes to political or economical issues, the right thing is to be so not to neglect religious issue for political or economical ones.</li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in">“What makes me sad is not what Sultan said” that was sad for me, I believe what Sultan said should in the first manner do make every Muslim sad.
</li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in">“It makes me wonder about our real priorities because the heights these actions and reactions have reached are truly ridiculous” that was truly disappointing, here you again, insult and scorn people’s feelings and acts for a particular issue in the name of freedom of speech!
</li></ol>

Abdullah 9 March 2008 at 11am
I was just waiting for this post. Yep, Arabs definitely need to reorganize their priorities, we have far more important issues to deal with, ones that affect us directly. But no, we just boycott danish products and stop there.

Farah 9 March 2008 at 7pm
<ol type="1" style="margin-top: 0in;">
<li style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal">It’s
normal, logical, desired and supposed to have a big fuss about any
attempt to any insult of the prophet or Islam, it’s not a sort of
freedom of speech by no means to curse prophets and religions, and it
is a red line no one should exceed.</li></ol>
(Insulting is not freedom of speech, you can’t call someone’s righteous mother a bitch for example)! I think this is where the fundamental disagreement over the Mohammad Cartoons really begins. In Jordan, Saudi Arabia, etc., insults may not be counted as "freedom of speech." I honestly don’t know the letter of the law, however, so I can’t say for certainty. In most Western countries, however, insults — and even insults about things as important to some people as religion — are in fact free speech. I can say whatever I want about Jesus, and I can say whatever I please about Mohammad, and if you don’t like it, tough shit. It doesn’t give anyone the right to riot in the streets, burn things, and plot to kill people who draw cartoons. That said, this Wafa Sultan person sounds like she’s a pretty useless person in the style of the TV talking heads we have over here in the States. They just shout and yell and try to create controversy without adding a thing of substance to the actual debate. There’s a legitimate debate to be had over the Mohammad Cartoons and the Muslim victim complex. Going on TV and just abusing Islam, however, doesn’t really accomplish anything. On the other hand, screaming about a TV channel being "anti-Islam" and demanding the program be taken off the air doesn’t really accomplish much either, now does it? 

Vincent 9 March 2008 at 9pm
<ol type="1" style="margin-top: 0in;">
<li style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal">It’s
normal, logical, desired and supposed to have a big fuss about any
attempt to any insult of the prophet or Islam, it’s not a sort of
freedom of speech by no means to curse prophets and religions, and it
is a red line no one should exceed.</li></ol>
(Insulting is not freedom of speech, you can’t call someone’s righteous mother a bitch for example)! 
 
 

Actually insulting people is "free speech" up to the point of violating their civil rights. If it becomes harassment or "hate speech" it is then illegal. Provocative speech (like insults), though legal, can be seen as justification for violence though – you can be considered to have started a physical altercation even if you didn’t throw the first blow. It is for this reason that insulting people face to frace is extremely rare. At least in the US. I haven’t been insulted in person in over 20 years, for example. But I get insulted on teh internet every single day :O  

Craig 9 March 2008 at 10pm
<div style="margin-left: 40px;">Al Jazeera had it coming. It really, really had it coming. A show like
The Opposite Direction in particular should have been stopped a long
time ago. It does not encourage dialogue but cockfighting. </div> A little bit of cockfighting in public discourse can be a good thing.  The fact that such arguments, with both sides of an issue being given their chance to speak, require apologies and possible cancellations of shows isn’t a positive sign for freedom of speech in the Arab world.  The United States has had tons of these shows (Firing Line, Crossfire, etc.) and, while not always intellectually productive, they do allow some controversial voices to be heard that would otherwise be ignored.  Sometimes that’s enough. 
<div style="margin-left: 40px;">I think part of the reason why some people easily accuse others when
they are not 100% pleased with their ideas lies in our education and in
the pressures that Arabs live under these days. Our education, for the
most part, does not offer the ‘counter argument’ and if it does, it
purposefully marginalizes it in favor of the more popular. </div> I’d say it lies in your tribalism and your accompanying honor-shame culture.  Insults to people’s honor are taken as a free pass to retaliate in any fashion, no matter how extreme. 
<div style="margin-left: 40px;">(Insulting is not freedom of speech, you can’t call someone’s righteous mother a bitch for example)! </div> In the United States you sure can and I don’t think Wafa Sultan called anyone’s mother a bitch.  If I called your mother a bitch in the United States you would be free to respond in kind.  You wouldn’t be free to attack me or riot or burn down embassies or take hostages. 
<div style="margin-left: 40px;">it’s not a sort of freedom of speech by no means to curse prophets and religions, and it is a red line no one should exceed. </div> It absolutely is and you cannot claim to have free speech in a society that enforces laws against blasphemy or, for that matter, laws against Holocaust denial, racist speech, sexist speech, controversial political or religious opinions, and so forth.  All social and political thought must be free to express itself. The U.S. has the strongest tradition of free speech in the world today and a long history of rivalries between different Christian denominations.  These disputes have been relatively non-violent but not always civil in tone.  But our philosophy has always been to fight words with words.  The tendency of most of the rest of world seems to be to enforce multiculturalism and religious pluralism through political oppression and violence. 

tommy 9 March 2008 at 11pm
Actually insulting people is "free speech" up to the point of violating their civil rights. If it becomes harassment or "hate speech" it is then illegal
You should know about hate Arab basher. Owning up to yr mistakes is the first step to rehabilitation. There is still hope to save yr soul albeit very slim one.

A.Rehman 10 March 2008 at 5am
Faisal Al Qasim opposite direction remonds me of Jerry Springer show although the later is mostly about relationships and jilted lovers and extremely vulgar as well as trivial, but bringing one with an axe to grind with muslims and already sopnsored by anti-muslim camps who does not flinch at hurting the feelings of billions with crude language and remarks and rhetoric that appeals to muslim and arab haters is bad taste.Bitting her against loud monochrome is equally bad taste  since what you got is a shouting match fomenting hate and misunderstanding rather than presenting reasonable arguments to clear mis-conceptions. Having said that I fail to understand the venom Wafa spews and why insult a whole devine religion and people and their prophet when even in these times there are still taboos against insulting say the Queen of England no matter what.My suggestion is to ignore her and not to help her make more money by giving her undue importance and speaking assignements.

A.Rehman 10 March 2008 at 6am
@tommy, craig & vincent The U.S. has the strongest tradition of free speech in the world today sheesh are you for real ! which parallel universe do u guys live in ? oh sorry i must have sniffed that frowzy american orientalism by now… Hey we aren’t saying that we are all that, but please don’t try to push your selves above us since whats happening in your backyard is far worse but you obviously are a bit too panic ridden to even notice. here i’ll help, check out this bill hun … <a href=http://www.wtvq.com/content/midatlantic/tvq/video.apx.-content-articles-TVQ-2008-03-05-0011.html>YES CLICK HERE</a> So careful when stepping on toes, for there might be someone holding your balls too … and your crappy ass political correctness doesn’t even cut it to be freedom on speech… tell that to Imus & rush 



bambam 10 March 2008 at 11am
Bambam, you need to learn more about how the US government actually works before you start commenting about how bad things are in the US, man. Any legislator can introduce anything they want, and request that it get voted on. Unless it actually DOES get voted on, and DOES pass, and DOES get signed into law, it means nothing. And even if it does become law, it’s up to the Supreme Court to decide whether controversial laws are actually constitutional or not. Your "example" amounts to a whole lot of nothing. As far as Imus (don’t know what you are referring to with Rush Limbaugh) he got fired for making racisst remarks on his radio program. Nobody accused him of doing anything illegal, as far as I know. He got fired for beinga  bigot. An open display of bigotry will get you fired from any private sector job in America. If an employer tolerated a bigot, they would be opening themselves up to a lawsuit for civil rights violations. 

Craig 10 March 2008 at 12pm
eh ? patriot act anyone ? DMCA ? phone companies illegal wiretapping operation that was upheld by the congress ? suspencion of haebus corpus and the apprehension of college professors without due process (al-arian). should i go on or does everything fly over ur head and you just live in the greatest country that ever will be in the world in terms of freedom of speech ? oh … i suggest you go read up on Noam chomsky to see what he has to say of the country ranked 48th in terms of freedom of expression … point shoot …. kabooom 

bambam 10 March 2008 at 1pm
Al Arian is a terrorist, not a "Professor", bambam. And Noam Chomsky is the very last person most Americans give a damn about. He caters more to the whole anti-American crowd, in case you didn’t notice. should i go on or
does everything fly over ur head and you just live in the greatest
country that ever will be in the world in terms of freedom of speech ? I don’t care if you go on or not. Your distaste for the US is self-evident. You don’t really expect Americans to agree with you on that, do you? :P Tell me, though, do these corrections of your mis-statement of fact go right over YOUR head? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sami_Al-Arian Like the fgact Al Arian is not just a suspected terrorist, but a CONVICTED terrorist? 

Craig 10 March 2008 at 2pm
<h2>Sentencing</h2>
U.S. District Judge James Moody sentenced al-Arian to the maximum 57
months in prison and gave him credit for time served. He will serve the
balance of 19 months and then be deported, prosecutors said. In his
ruling, Moody harshly criticized al-Arian for doing nothing to stop
bombings perpetrated by Islamic Jihad. "You lifted not one finger. To
the contrary, you laughed when you heard of the bombings," he said.
"You are a master manipulator. The evidence is clear in this case. You
were a leader of the PIJ."<a title="" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sami_Al-Arian#_note-3">[11]</a>
<a title="" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sami_Al-Arian#_note-3"></a>
<a id="Grand_jury_subpoena_and_hunger_strike" name="Grand_jury_subpoena_and_hunger_strike" />
<h2>[<a title="Edit section: Grand jury subpoena and hunger strike" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sami_Al-Arian&action=edit&section=8">edit</a>] Grand jury subpoena and hunger strike</h2>
Al-Arian has recently refused to testify to a federal <a title="Grand jury" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_jury">grand jury</a> in <a title="Alexandria, Virginia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandria%2C_Virginia">Alexandria, Virginia</a>, in an investigation of the <a title="International Institute of Islamic Thought" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Institute_of_Islamic_Thought">International Institute of Islamic Thought</a>’s alleged financing of terror because he believes, "his life would be in danger if he testified."<a title="" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sami_Al-Arian#_note-Markon">[12]</a>
Further, Al-Arian claims he has no information that could further the
investigation and his attorneys argued that the grand jury <a title="Subpoena" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subpoena">subpoena</a> violates Al-Arian’s plea agreement with U.S. prosecutors.<a title="" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sami_Al-Arian#_note-Markon">[12]</a>
In a verbal agreement that appears in court transcripts, federal
prosecutors agreed that Al-Arian would not have to testify in Virginia.<a title="" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sami_Al-Arian#_note-Laughlin2">[13]</a> These arguments were rejected by a federal judge in Florida and Al-Arian (who is diabetic) began a 60-day <a title="Hunger strike" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_strike">hunger strike</a> on January 22, 2007, to "protest continued government harassment."<a title="" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sami_Al-Arian#_note-Markon">[12]</a><a title="" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sami_Al-Arian#_note-4">[14]</a> As of March 20, 2007, Al-Arian, who is 6-feet tall, had lost 53 of the 202 pounds he weighed when he started his hunger strike.<a title="" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sami_Al-Arian#_note-Laughlin2">[13]</a>

Craig 10 March 2008 at 2pm
Actually insulting people is "free speech" up to the point of violating their civil rights.

Maybe so in the US and Denmark but not in Jordan and any other Arab country. Insulting religions or Profits is against the law and this applies to Christianity and Judism as well. You may not like it or agree with it but thats the law. I live in the US and I appreciate many of the freedoms is awards its citizen but calling the president names like "chimp" or idiot among others is disrespectful not only to the person but the the office he represents. This maybe part of the American culture but it is not part of ours.

Imad 10 March 2008 at 3pm
so I guess you prefer to listen to daniel pipes then ? by your own selective quoting and ignoring the rest of what i said it seems that its the first time you ever heard of the guy. Oh the irony that you call ur self a libertarian! look craig, this part is just for your selective reading: The six-month trial featured more than 80 witnesses and 400 transcripts of intercepted phone conversations and faxes.<a title="" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sami_Al-Arian#_note-Laughlin">[7]</a> At the end of the prosecution’s case, Al-Arian’s attorneys rested without offering a defense.<a title="" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sami_Al-Arian#_note-Laughlin">[7]</a> On <a title="December 6" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_6" style="font-weight: bold;">December 6</a>, <a title="2005" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005" style="font-weight: bold;">2005</a>,
after 13 days of deliberations, the jury acquitted him on eight of 17
counts, while remaining deadlocked 10-2 in favor of acquittal on the
other nine.<a title="" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sami_Al-Arian#_note-Laughlin">[7]</a>
Of fifty-one charges against the four men, not one resulted in a
conviction; Ballut and Hammoudeh were acquitted on all charges.<a title="" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sami_Al-Arian#_note-Laughlin">[7]</a> i’ll repeat that … "not one resulted in a conviction" within the trial, yet he remained detained and settled for the plea agreement,  either way we are not discussing that. we are discussing the claim that the US is the pinnacle of freedom and freedom of speech like you three claim. so far all i got is empty rhetoric ? do you need a debate for dummies manual ? i’ll send you one, on me this time. oh and i just noticed … "it is for this reason
that insulting people face to frace is extremely rare. At least in the
US. I haven’t been insulted in person in over 20 years, for example" are you sure ? is it because of that ? or maybe cause you are a white, white collar, suburbanite where you live in your own synthetic bubble that you haven’t been offended in person … i wonder . I
don’t care if you go on or not. Your distaste for the US is
self-evident. You don’t really expect Americans to agree with you on
that, do you? :P 
hmm the sane ones do …and don’t worry and equally oppurtunity offender so don’t think for a second that i single out the US. 
<div dir="ltr" id="result_box">Cuidar mi amigo</div> 

bambam 10 March 2008 at 3pm
Imad ? eh … its a different country, and a different set of rules. unless your vying for the universal return of the caliphate please drop "don’t disrespect us and our culture when your culture allows it. because we are arab muslims" rhetoric. it doesn’t hold ground. 

bambam 10 March 2008 at 4pm
<div style="margin-left: 40px;">Actually insulting
people is "free speech" up to the point of violating their civil
rights. If it becomes harassment or "hate speech" it is then illegal </div> Hate speech is not criminal in the United States.  It is in some European countries just like Holocaust denial.  Both are serious violations of free speech, in my opinion.   Jordan is not a country that practices free speech and neither is Germany. Printing derisive cartoons of a living person in a newspaper would not be considered harassment under any circumstance in the United States.  The best you might be able to do is sue for libel in civil court and even that is an uphill battle.  Initiating a lawsuit over cartoons mocking a dead person or a well-known public figure, live or dead, would get you laughed out of court. 
<div style="margin-left: 40px;"> sheesh
are you for real ! which parallel universe do u guys live in ? oh sorry
i must have sniffed that frowzy american orientalism by now… </div> American Orientalism?  What does Orientalism have to do with anything I said?  Edward Said’s silly and wrong-headed anti-Orientalism is apparently the "one size fits all" rebuttal to every objection westerners might hold about your culture.  Said’s disingenuousness can be seen in the fact that he spent an inordinate amount of time telling us how wrong the Orientalists were about Arabs and no time providing an alternative image of Arabs to take the place of the Orientalists’.  So busy did he attack the Orientalists that he showed not the slightest interest in undertaking any significant analysis of his own about Arabs. And, in the process of criticizing the Orientalists, he failed to distinguish serious academic opinion of Arabs from Hollywood projections, as if Hollywood’s take on Arabs (or anything else) was as likely to reflect scholarly opinion as a book by Bernard Lewis.  Here is some American Orientalism for you: while the West has innumerable critics of our own culture and history, both on the political left and right, religious or secular, there is an amazing lack of intellectual introspection among Arabs about themselves. Tololy’s explanation that education is to blame is fashionable but wrong.   (If Said’s drivel is the universal rebuttal to critics of the Arabs then improved education seems to be the universal antidote to the problems of the Arabs.) Americans were a very uneducated people on the world scene for most of their history.  They still have a long tradition of regarding free speech as a value worth defending in and of itself.   Better educated nations have shown far less tolerance. Culture is the problem. 

tommy 10 March 2008 at 7pm
A lot has been said on this space, and I don’t know if what I will say will fuel the discussion more or not. BUT, I will share what I think anyway: 1- Education & culture as a basis for potential hypersensitivity in the Arab world: Education IS an integral part of culture, and a way to modify it. While Arab culture customarily holds honor and shame as important concepts, it also holds hospitality, generosity, and communal cooperation, among other things, equally important. Saying that Arab culture is entirely negative is absurd, likewise, saying that education is NOT a major part of any culture is absurd. 2- Americans as having free speech in their cultural genes: Simply not true. Americans have developed their own sense of free speech over time, and they were not born with it. Think of the Puritans and their censorship, think of the situation of slaves and African-Americans and the hardships they went through to voice their opinions and acquire their civil rights, etc. 3- The American legislative process: While it’s true what Craig said about the seeming ‘ease’ with which a bill gets introduced, and the theoretical processes that it follows to become a law, the fact remains that this is highly theoretical as least in its idealistic nature. Craig forgot to mention that for a bill to turn into a law not only does it need to be approved by BOTH houses of the Congress (including the many lobbies and committees that can and do technically kill a bill in its infancy if they don’t like it), it also gets modified, debated, examined, and THEN it goes to the President who may or may not approve of it. So between all that, one wonders where the free speech that Craig thinks he is proving, stands. If a bill is not in the favor of a major lobby or committee, it does not even get introduced because the legislator would not want to waste time on it. 4- I question anyone’s ulterior motives when they contrast America and the Arab world as two complete opposites, with America being good and the Arabs being bad. You can’t be biased like that and expect to get away with it, not even if you use big words. 5- American Orientalism: Edward Said stepped on many toes convinced of Western superiority, so it’s understandable that he would have plenty of critics especially among those who speak in a holier-than-thou manner. Bernard Lewis, on the other hand, is a questionable ‘academic’ with a history of Orientalist activity in its ugliest forms. Said founded postcolonialism, but as to be expected, did not have enough time on his hands to write about every aspect of every tiny detail of it. Thinkers who were influenced by his philosophy continued his job. Lewis, on the other hand, had it easy. This was a man who worked primarily in the 20th century on a concrete, well established heritage of Orientalism almost five centuries old. He mainly repeated what Orientalists before him had imagined to be academic studies of Arabia. Remember also that he was consulted by the Bush administration about its ‘war on terrorism’ — that alone should reveal much about his credibility and biases. The innoy is, he argued against Said’s maintaining that Orientalism is the academic residue of colonialism in the Arab world, by citing Orientalist evidence of the 16th and 17th centuries. He completely forgot that the Bible, the staple of Western thinking up until the Enlightenment, had related amazing images of hostile, sensual, and lowly Arabs. Some academic! 6- Not everyone who notes a negativity about America is automatically anti-American, and not everyone who notes a negativity about the Arab world is anti-Arab. Consrtuctive criticism is good, rejecting it and being stubborn about one’s own cultural supremacy is idiotic. Thanks for reading this far, and thanks for the engaging discussions you started. Now you can continue discussing things and I won’t intervene. 

Tololy 10 March 2008 at 8pm
Imad: "Insulting religions or Profits is against the law and this applies to Christianity and Judism as well." Are you saying that when Jordanian Catholic and Orthodox Christians called Protestants "illegitimate" (there is no greater insult to somebody’s religious beliefs, is there?) that they were breaking Jordanian law? If so, then why weren’t tehy arrested and charged with a crime? Bambam: so I guess you
prefer to listen to daniel pipes then ? by your own selective quoting
and ignoring the rest of what i said it seems that its the first time
you ever heard of the guy. Where is that coming from? Daniel Pipes is nothing to me, and I don’t understand why you would claim he is. Oh the irony that you call ur self a
libertarian! And a Christian. As I recall, you don’t believe I have any right to call myself that, either. You seem to think you have the right to define the paramaters of my existence for me :O Skipping all you said about Al Arian. I guess you don’t understand what the word "conviction" means. The man pled guilty to providing material support to a terrorist group. That’s a criminal conviction, right there. He may be charged with additional crimes in the state of Florida, which has chosen to investigate him independently of the state of Virginia. 

Craig 11 March 2008 at 12am
Hate speech is not criminal in the United States. Hate speech is illegal in some states, Tommy. It’s true that theer are no formal "Hate Speech" laws at the federal level. But some kinds of speech are considered civil rights violations, and can be prosecuted under civil rights legislation. Tololy, thanks for sharing your views. I agree with some of what you wrote, and disagree with some of it. I won’t reply to all your points, but this one I would like to answer: 4- I question
anyone’s ulterior motives when they contrast America and the Arab world
as two complete opposites, with America being good and the Arabs being
bad. You can’t be biased like that and expect to get away with it, not
even if you use big words. Is the opposite true as well? Because in my opinion it’s very rare to encounter an Arab on a blog who feels anything but contempt for Americans. I personally have gotten tired of trying to discuss things objectively with people who are cultural and/or religious bigots. So, I don’t. You can’t have a "debate" when your opponent does nothing but mud-slinging. At least, I’m not aware of any way to do that. And whenever I have tried to engage somebody who is open minded enough to discuss an issue on the merits (like you) – invariable some Arab bigot shows up and starts pissing all over me. And nobody (Arab) ever bothers to correct their abusive behavior. It gets old. Fast. 

Craig 11 March 2008 at 12am
<div style="margin-left: 40px;">Thanks for reading
this far, and thanks for the engaging discussions you started. Now you
can continue discussing things and I won’t intervene. </div>Why not join in? ;-) 
<div style="margin-left: 40px;"> While Arab culture
customarily holds honor and shame as important concepts, it also holds
hospitality, generosity, and communal cooperation, among other things,
equally important. </div> Sure, tribal societies that aren’t entirely xenophobic and reclusive (like certain Andaman Islanders) tend to be at least superficially courteous and hospitable to outsiders and usually place great emphasis on loyalty and honor among tribesmen.  They also tend to have a low tolerance for anything regarded as a breech of expected conduct and, thus, freedom of speech is not highly valued. Winston Churchill on possibly the most Arab non-Arabs, the Pashtuns: Campaigning on the Indian frontier is an experience by itself.
Neither the landscape nor the people find their counterparts in any
other portion of the globe. Valley walls rise steeply five or six
thousand feet on every side. The columns crawl through a maze of giant
corridors down which fierce snow-fed torrents foam under skies of
brass. Amid these scenes of savage brilliancy there dwells a race whose
qualities seem to harmonise with their environment. Except at
harvest-time, when self-preservation enjoins a temporary truce, the
Pathan tribes are always engaged in private or public war. Every man is
a warrior, a politician and a theologian. Every large house is a real
feudal fortress made, it is true, only of sunbaked clay, but with
battlements, turrets, loopholes, flanking towers, drawbridges, etc.,
complete. Every village has its defence. Every family cultivates its
vendetta; every clan, its feud. The numerous tribes and combinations of
tribes all have their accounts to settle with one another. Nothing is
ever forgotten, and very few debts are left unpaid. For the purposes of
social life, in addition to the convention about harvest-time, a most
elaborate code of honour has been established and is on the whole
faithfully observed. A man who knew it and observed it faultlessly
might pass unarmed from one end of the frontier to another. The
slightest technical slip would, however, be fatal. The life of the
Pathan is thus full of interest; and his valleys, nourished alike by
endless sunshine and abundant water, are fertile enough to yield with
little labour the modest material requirements of a sparse population.
Into this happy world the nineteenth century brought two new facts: the
breech-loading rifle and the British Government.
 
<div style="margin-left: 40px;">Saying that Arab
culture is entirely negative is absurd, likewise, saying that education
is NOT a major part of any culture is absurd. </div> No one, to my knowledge, has denied that.  However, the idea that education is going to fix what are fundamentally greater problems of family formation and tribalism seems doubtful. 
<div style="margin-left: 40px;">Americans as having
free speech in their cultural genes: Simply not true. Americans have
developed their own sense of free speech over time, and they were not
born with it. Think of the Puritans and their censorship, think of the
situation of slaves and African-Americans and the hardships they went
through to voice their opinions and acquire their civil rights, etc. </div> The multireligious state of the colonies, with its Puritans, Catholics, Quakers, Anabaptists and others who often carried on bitter rivalries was part of the reason why any cohesive nation had to develop a civil life where religion was a mostly personal matter and where ideological disputes were mediated through non-coercive means (i.e. non-violent, but not always nice, verbal and literary disputes).  Much of the rest of the world, especially the Muslim world, has settled on a path that is more akin to a hypothetical group of pre-revolutionary Catholics in Maryland demanding stern laws prohibiting Puritans further north from mocking their saints under the auspices of maintaining social order and respecting one another.  America might not have become democratic had that been allowed. America had an advantage over the Arabs in at least one significant respect: family structure; we’ve never had tribalism, endogamy has been rare, and even the extended family has been relatively weak from the beginning.   That makes nation-building a lot easier since people can give their loyalty to the state and not divide loyalties between state and tribe.  It also results in a cleaner civil society because tribalism and endogamy encourage corruption and a culture of "connections." As for blacks, it sadly took a long time for America to regard them as citizens.  However, the right of free speech on religious and political matters for those who were full-fledged citizens in the U.S. have, with few and very limited exceptions, not been in question for a long time. 
<div style="margin-left: 40px;">Remember also that
he was consulted by the Bush administration about its ‘war on
terrorism’ — that alone should reveal much about his credibility and
biases. </div> I would partially agree.  I find Said’s largely ad hominem abuse of Lewis to be about as substanceless as anything Said ever penned, but it’s true that Lewis was an optimist about the possibilities of a democratic Iraq.  Robert Spencer, who opposed the war and whose opinion of Islam is far less forgiving than that of Lewis, turned out to be more realistic. 
<div style="margin-left: 40px;">The innoy is, he
argued against Said’s maintaining that Orientalism is the academic
residue of colonialism in the Arab world, by citing Orientalist
evidence of the 16th and 17th centuries. He completely forgot that the
Bible, the staple of Western thinking up until the Enlightenment, had
related amazing images of hostile, sensual, and lowly Arabs. </div> The Bible says nothing directly of Arabs and those chapters that discribe  Mideastern life were written mostly by the Hebrews- – Mideasterners detailing their own tribal way of life!  Bernard Lewis’ was right: 16th and 17th century observations of the Arab world could hardly be the product of a then nonexistent colonialism and were rather an outgrowth of Renaissance interest in the world at large, including a world that had once existed in places like ancient Egypt and Babylonia.  If Said hadn’t wasted so much time dubbing his opponents "ignorant" or accusing them of "demogogy," he might have had time to offer up a competing vision of the Arab world.  I suspect the reason he did not was because any such theory could be subjected to the very scrutiny Said liked to pour upon others (even if Said himself was a sloppy scrutinizer). Being a cultural relativist of the worst kind, Said’s stock response to those who said anything he didn’t like was to claim they failed to recognize "diversity" or "pluralism" or "complexities" in the Arab world.  But, of course, all understanding of our world is based upon finding patterns.  Said’s response to patterns Orientalists observed was about as unsatisfying and unproductive as a physicist who explains the workings of the physical world by saying, "It’s all very complex, you see!"  It may indeed be complex, more than you realize at first, but as any scientist knows, you have to start somewhere.  You find patterns, work out fundamental laws and relationships, replace flawed theories with better ones, and flesh out the details as you go.  The objections of postcolonialists might be more welcome if they weren’t all so vague and unverifiable, but postcolonialists have generally continued to in Said’s tradition: tell us how wrong the West is in its judgments, how awful the West has been, and provide no hypothesis whatsoever about the culture in question. Said’s slothful scholarship fits a culture that is intellectually lazy, historically non-introspective, unscientific, and lagging technologically.  No wonder he’s so popular among modern Muslims.  It’s a symptom of the decline of the West — along with moral relativism, postmodernism, multiculturalism, modern leftism, contemporary Continental philosophy, and the wackiest flavors of feminism and ethnic activism — that the man has gained any traction here. 

tommy 11 March 2008 at 6am
Tommy, I don’t think you are being fair in your judgements. It seems to me that you are arguing to prove that Arab culture is entirely negative, that Arabs are innately hostile and lowly, and like I mentioned in my previous comment, saying that Arab culture is entirely negative is absurd. I will give you evidence of your bias from your opinions: 1- "Tribal
societies that aren’t entirely xenophobic and reclusive[...]tend to be at least superficially courteous and
hospitable to outsiders." I especially like the use of ‘at least’ and ’superficially.’ 2- You quote Churchill, which is to be expected in a debate about the views of other societies from a supremacist point of view. It is very fitting and very amusing to see how you chose Churchill, the great warrior-politician and colonizer, to give you a pseudo-scientific account of life in a non-Western society. Doesn’t that tell you something? 3- It is true that America and the Arab world have different histories, but I understand you were implicitly attributing the different history of the Arab world to some sort of dysfunstion, and not merely to chronology and environment. That is a form of racism. You seem to trivialize the journey of America towards its version of free speech, as if it came easy, which it didn’t. Like America developed its version of free speech and its version of democracy, the Arab world is starting to go through similar situations that will set it on that path. If you grudge it this right which you had, then that is the reason why Americans think they will democratize the Arab world by applying their own versions of the concept. And see the mess they created when they did that! It’s truly Orientalism at work. 4- Lewis you say was optimistic about ‘democratizing’ Iraq. Take a look at Iraq now, and take a look at the records of torture and violations of human rights that take place there by American soldiers, and then give credit to the man for his erroneous ‘Orientalist’ knowledge which guided America to this bog, if you can. Do not forget, too, that America supported and still supports tyrannical regimes in the world where its interests are best met. So don’t look down at the Arab world as an inferior place, when your supposedly civilized country openly tolerates and funds the very opposites of democracy. 5- The Bible: The Old Testament was largely a history of ancient Jews, and the Arabs were their enemies. Here are some examples of the portrayal of Arabs: The Arabs as being God’s agents of retribution (when the Hebrews entered Canaan there remained Arabs there to be ‘ a thorn in your sides, and their gods will be a snare unto you.’), Arabs as being means of temptation (Jezebel, Delilah, Bath-sheba the Hittite, Potiphar’s wife), Arabs as resembling animals (hairiness in Esau’s case, Zeeb the warrior who faced Gideon – Zeeb meaning wolf ). All of these images were later employed to justify the Biblical carnage that Jews were to carry out against the Arabs. As Joshua went through Canaanite cities like God’s own wrath leaving nothing alive, Jezebel was crushed and left for the dogs, David the great Arab-killer was sent to raise a dowry of one hundred Philistine foreskins but came back with two hundred. Remember, the colonies in the New World were for the most part religious, and religion played a significant role in America’s development. The very idea that the Puritans wanted to establish a city upon a hill and entered into a covenant with God, much like the one between him and Israel, meant that they analyzed and understood the aforementioned imagery of the Arabs in the Bible. Moreover, even if you trivialize the role of the Bible as a major source for Western images about the Arabs, remember that the Crusades took place long before the 16th and 17th centuries. Can Lewis honestly dismiss the Crusades and all the propaganda that accompanied them as not parallel to, even synonymous with, colonialist ambition? Are they not, complete with travel literature, the very birthplace of Orientalism? 

Tololy 11 March 2008 at 10am
And
a Christian. As I recall, you don’t believe I have any right to call
myself that, either. You seem to think you have the right to define the
paramaters of my existence for me :O not really but you can’t blame me if i find irony in an ex-marine calling himself a libertarian. you have the right the hold whatever labels you like, and i have the right to think of them in whichever manner i find fit.  I guess you don’t understand what the word "conviction"
means. oh well i just happen to be more interested in what the jury decided rather than a man who has been held for 4 years by then and just wanted things to end… eitherway, i don’t have to ascribe by the american definition of a conviction which means that if you were ever charged and admitted guilt that is a conviction even if it was overturned, vacated, or a nolle prosequi was issued . and thats as much as am willing to digress, not interested in pointing out the flaws in the american legal system, or confusing you with legal term i just ask that you extend me the curtousy of not presuming things about my knowledge without due evidence. 
I personally have gotten tired of trying to discuss things objectively
with people who are cultural and/or religious bigots. So, I don’t. You
can’t have a "debate" when your opponent does nothing but mud-slinging. well thank god for short, every altrication that i had with you has been nothing but a hollier than thou mentality which can hardly be called open minded. 

bambam 11 March 2008 at 11am
@ tommy Said’s
slothful scholarship fits a culture that is intellectually lazy,
historically non-introspective, unscientific, and lagging
technologically.  No wonder he’s so popular among modern Muslims Thats a loaded statement son! a load full of preconceptions and blanket statements that i feel that are directed at me… too bad i don’t fit any of those even to the slightest degree. The Bible says nothing directly of Arabs and those chapters that discribe  Mideastern life were written mostly by the Hebrews The whole bible was written in hebrew, its a language … so mostly just shows a slight lack of knowledge in historical theology. And it does talk about them (after all they are the people of the bible whether you like it or not). and you exhibited enough supremicist attitude with your statements that warrants the orientalist label. what am reading here does sound like a incoherent daniel pipes and lewis commenting thats why it drew the reference… either way scholarship with out first hand experience is like talking about science without experiments while not entirely flawed it just doesn’t hold the same credibility and thats the main difference between said and lewis. The imperialist view of europe in the middle east are historic, unless you are as selective in what you reference as lewis or pipes are. So i won’t digress further, both you and craig claim that the US is the pinnacle of democracy and free speech in the world. and till now all i have seen is either supermicist blabber that significance,  or  nitpicking examples as false while ignoring the other glaring ones. Hell America criminilized the anti war movement, so much for free speech. it has a two party democracy which is not much of a democracy due to the road blocks set in front of a third part or Independants, it is the most religious christian country in the western world behind the vatican and a lot of legislations reflect that. plus that legislation explenation missed out on a lot of things but the most important is that the president of the USA is allowed to issue executive orders that don’t abide by any oversight. so i would like to hear some backing of why the USA is the pinnacle of freedom and democracy before you make any such claims, and again watch out for preconceptions about where i stand about things. We want the facts to fit the preconceptions. When they don’t it is easier to ignore the facts than to change the preconceptions. 
Jessamyn West 

bambam 11 March 2008 at 12pm
[...] Up the street from our office is the Arab Broadcasting Service, which hosts Al-Jazeera’s Office in Jordan. About half an hour ago, a colleague called me out to see this protest by fifty people or so. Signs and banners were saying that Al-Jazeera should apologize for having insulted the Prophet during Faisal al Qassem’s notorious talk show “The Opposite Direction”, where he hosted Wafa Sultan and an Islamic Cleric to discuss the reprinting of The Cartoons in Denmark. Another sign read “In what concerns our Prophet, there is only one direction, no opposite direction!”Al Jazeera had already apologized, but I guess people wanted to protest anyway. I have to get back to work, but you can read more about the controversy on Tololy’s blog. [...]

Into the Wind: A Protest in front of Al-Jazeera's Offices 11 March 2008 at 12pm
The land of Palestine during the time of Joshua. The twelve tribes are listed separately. Joshua proved to be an excellent general by his victory over the Amalekites (Exod 17:9, 13). After Moses’ death, according to the Book of Joshua, Joshua led the Israelites in their conquest of the highlands of central Palestine and during the distribution of the land among the twelve tribes, from the crossing of the Jordan (Josh 3) and the fall of Jericho (Josh 6) to the renewal of the covenant at Shechem (Josh 24). </td></tr></tbody></table>It may be noted that the victorious Jews killed every man, woman and child, killed all animals and destroyed everything and were barred from benifiting from anything that belonged to the conqured according to them by divine decree.Compare that to Islam which spread through trade, acceptance and gave the conquered the choice of either embracing Islam or paying a levy if they wish to hold into their faith and thus be protected and continue to practice their faith freely. It was clearly a benign and civilized attitude at a time when it was the accepted practice that conquerers have the rights to decimate the conquerees and enslave them and destroy their heritage, Islam barred the faithful from killing civilians, people in  their churches and temples and women and children and were also barred from killing animals and cutting trees.

A.Rehman 11 March 2008 at 4pm
Forgot the link
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua</a>

A.Rehman 11 March 2008 at 4pm
first of all am sorry i don’t have the time to read all the comments, i don’t know if some one talk about what am going to talk about, the thing that makes me so nerves from these programs in addtion to some points mentioned in the post, that they didn’t invite who are truly can talk strongly about the opinion especially about islam issues, they are inviting people that only have degrees even all of us know that they are not able to denfend the opinion of many persons, thats the same thing happened with wafa sultan, i think if she met some one able to stop her, she will not be in that aggresive way and she will take her self away from all of that.

bahloul 11 March 2008 at 5pm
I don’t feel vindicated but rather sorry that so many who preached and took the moral high ground where finally caught doing the same thing they were prosecuting others for doing. Spitzer, NY Attorney General for 9 years and Governor for a year went afer prostitution rings while using their services whole the time probably using our tax money. I have no problem with him using these services but do have problem ,big one, with his hypocrisy.This is following many high profile politicians and religous leaders fall from grace.
<a href="http://www.google.com/url?q=http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story%3Fid%3D4424943%26page%3D1&sa=X&oi=news_result&resnum=1&ct=result&cd=2&usg=AFQjCNFDGWQIpRLsMCYZt6gewyZcXiLGmg">http://www.google.com/url?q=http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story%3Fid%3D4424943%26page%3D1&sa=X&oi=news_result&resnum=1&ct=result&cd=2&usg=AFQjCNFDGWQIpRLsMCYZt6gewyZcXiLGmg</a>
<a href="http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=M2YxNjZhZTIwOGMyMGUxNDJlYmUwM2FmOTczYTIxMzk">http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=M2YxNjZhZTIwOGMyMGUxNDJlYmUwM2FmOTczYTIxMzk</a>=
<a href="http://www.google.com/url?q=http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gvseu7uDYI9vGyMHJCo51IdS-4twD8VB7N800&sa=X&oi=news_result&resnum=1&ct=result&cd=1&usg=AFQjCNERoBuVr3TWrdEtXxXNgxeQJS2pLQ">http://www.google.com/url?q=http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gvseu7uDYI9vGyMHJCo51IdS-4twD8VB7N800&sa=X&oi=news_result&resnum=1&ct=result&cd=1&usg=AFQjCNERoBuVr3TWrdEtXxXNgxeQJS2pLQ</a>

A.Rehman 11 March 2008 at 6pm
<div style="margin-left: 40px;">Tommy, I don’t think
you are being fair in your judgements. It seems to me that you are
arguing to prove that Arab culture is entirely negative, that Arabs are
innately hostile and lowly, and like I mentioned in my previous
comment, saying that Arab culture is entirely negative is absurd. I will give you evidence of your bias from your opinions: </div> I don’t blame Arabs for the circumstances of history, but I do blame history for the circumstances of Arabs.  I think Arabs, far from being entirely negative, are a very sensitive and sentimental people.  I think when issues of politics and religion are put aside, most Arabs are probably very nice people.  I’ve never been to the Mideast, but one of my friends was the daughter of a contractor in Saudi Arabia.  Her descriptions of Saudis in daily life, in spite of all the political and social oppression in the country, convince me most Arabs are just trying to get by as best they can in the world — just like the rest of us. I believe the Arab world has experienced the pangs of modernization too quickly for its own good and that the culture hasn’t had nearly enough time to adapt to a world where change is being driven by the West (and, more recently, a semi-westernized Far East).  I also think many Arabs hold some resentment toward the West over the fact that they aren’t a pre-eminent power in the modern world as they once were.  I get the feeling that a fair amount of extremism among Muslims is motivated by nostalgia for previous times when Muslim power was at its peak. 
<div style="margin-left: 40px;">The
Arabs as being God’s agents of retribution (when the Hebrews entered
Canaan there remained Arabs there to be ‘ a thorn in your sides, and
their gods will be a snare unto you.’), Arabs as being means of
temptation (Jezebel, Delilah, Bath-sheba the Hittite, Potiphar’s wife),
Arabs as resembling animals (hairiness in Esau’s case, Zeeb the warrior
who faced Gideon – Zeeb meaning wolf ). </div> The interpretation of Canaanites (or the Ammonites or Amalekites or any other ancient Biblical group) as Arabs is highly suspect.  Even by biblical description, the Canaanites were descendants of Ham (and would have presumably spoke a Hamitic tongue rather than Semitic Arabic).  According to the ancient Greeks and modern scholars, the Canaanites were actually the a branch of the Semitic Phoenicians, not Arabs.  The traditional account of their near extermination at the hands of the Hebrews would seem to rule them out as antecdents to the Arabs.  The Hittites were most definitely not Arabs (they spoke an Indo-European language distantly related to Greek and Sanskrit).   Ancient Jews identified Esau with the Romans.  With Arabs being centered in the remote interior of Arabia in ancient times, they were essentially non-entities in Jewish and classical thought.  Aramaic, not Arabic, was the prevalent Semitic language in the Mideast prior to Muslim expansion.  Negative opinion of non-Jewish Mideasterners by European Christians doesn’t seem to predate Muslim conquests of Christendom in the Near East and North Africa. I suspect it might have been Muhammad himself who chose to identify Arabs with the Biblical character of Ishmael.  If so, this was a conscious decision on the part of Muslims to graft themselves into existing monotheistic tradition. Of course, Muslims will argue differently.  
<div style="margin-left: 40px;">You
quote Churchill, which is to be expected in a debate about the views of
other societies from a supremacist point of view. It is very fitting
and very amusing to see how you chose Churchill, the great
warrior-politician and colonizer, to give you a pseudo-scientific
account of life in a non-Western society. Doesn’t that tell you
something? </div> Do you have any factual dispute with Churchill’s observations or are you going to just play the ad hominem game?  I found Churchill’s description to be straightforward and in keeping with what others have said about the Pashtuns. 
<div style="margin-left: 40px;">
It is true that America and the Arab world have different histories,
but I understand you were implicitly attributing the different history
of the Arab world to some sort of dysfunstion, and not merely to
chronology and environment. That is a form of racism. You seem to
trivialize the journey of America towards its version of free speech,
as if it came easy, which it didn’t. </div> Tribalism has its advantages which is why it exists in the first place, but it isn’t conducive toward maintaining a modern nation-state.  Free speech, while not come upon easily, was less strenuous for Europeans than it would have been for Arabs. 
<div style="margin-left: 40px;">Lewis
you say was optimistic about ‘democratizing’ Iraq. Take a look at Iraq
now, and take a look at the records of torture and violations of human
rights that take place there by American soldiers, and then give credit
to the man for his erroneous ‘Orientalist’ knowledge which guided
America to this bog, if you can. </div> There has been little torture by American troops and the abuses at Abu Ghraib were met with prison sentences for those involved.  By contrast, there has been a great deal of torture and mayhem committed by local Arab insurgents mostly against Arab civilians.  It wasn’t Lewis’ "erroneous ‘Orientalist’ knowledge" that led him to support the war, but his erroneous belief that somehow the Arabs were just like the Germans or the Japanese and could be brought into the fold of the West just like these nations were in the wake of World War II.  It was Lewis’ mistaken belief in the sameness of Muslims that led him to support the war.  It was Robert Spencer’s (and paleoconservatives like Pat Buchanan’s) belief in the differences of Arabs and Muslims that led him (and them) to oppose it. 
<div style="margin-left: 40px;">Do
not forget, too, that America supported and still supports tyrannical
regimes in the world where its interests are best met. So don’t look
down at the Arab world as an inferior place, when your supposedly
civilized country openly tolerates and funds the very opposites of
democracy. </div> America has made mistakes and selfish decisions.  However, its foreign policy is frequently guided by the principle of supporting what it sees, rightly or wrongly, as the lesser of two evils.  America cannot handpick politicians and it’s wise to acknowledge that not all nations are equally capable of democracy.  America supports Mubarak because it believes the alternative is the Muslim Brotherhood, not democracy for Egyptians.  America supports the Saudi royals because the alternative looks less like freedom than an even more severe theocratic regime.  In the 80s, America supported Saddam Hussein against Iran, because Iran looked like the more dangerous of the two countries (and that judgment has turned out to be correct).  And more perceptive Americans knew it wasn’t wise to overthrow the tyrant Saddam Hussein because the alternative might be chaos.  Of course, the Muslim world would still be demonizing America if we hadn’t overthrown Saddam Hussein.  They would say, as many critics of American foreign policy said after the first Gulf War, that this was more proof we just didn’t care about the oppression Arabs lived under.  They would have demonized us for lifting sanctions against Iraq and letting the oil flow freely (as France and others wanted).  You see, America inevitably takes the blame for the fact that democracy just isn’t very popular among people in many parts of the world. 
<div style="margin-left: 40px;">The whole bible was written in hebrew, its a language … so mostly just shows a slight lack of knowledge in historical theology. </div> Not true.  Much of the New Testament was apparently written in Koine Greek.  Also, Aramaic rather than Hebrew was the common language of Jews in the time of Jesus. 
<div style="margin-left: 40px;">So
i won’t digress further, both you and craig claim that the US is the
pinnacle of democracy and free speech in the world. and till now all i
have seen is either supermicist blabber that significance,  or 
nitpicking examples as false while ignoring the other glaring ones. </div> What does my "blabber" have to do with a lack of free speech or democracy? 
<div style="margin-left: 40px;">Hell America criminilized the anti war movement, so much for free speech. </div> America has not criminalized the anti-war movement.  They’re as busy as ever in places like San Francisco.  I think you’ve been watching too much Arab television. ;-) 
<div style="margin-left: 40px;">It was clearly
a benign and civilized attitude at a time when it was the accepted
practice that conquerers have the rights to decimate the conquerees and
enslave them and destroy their heritage, Islam barred the faithful from
killing civilians, people in  their churches and temples and women and
children and were also barred from killing animals and cutting trees. </div> Even when these practices have been followed, it has been provided they conquered subsist as dhimmis. 

tommy 11 March 2008 at 6pm
Even when these practices have been followed, it has been provided they conquered subsist as dhimmis.

One must look at these events within the context of the times and the practice prevailling at the time. At the time 1700 yrs and before , killing and savagery and enslaving was the norm not the exception. That Islam gave a better choice ,even if we frown upon it now, is better than putting them to the sword. You will know that more than 600 yrs after that the Christians in Spain( Andalusia) did not give that choice to the Muslims. The choice was between death and conversion. The survival of the Jews and Christians in the Arab world at the zenieth of the Islamic empire is a testament that Islam tolerates and accepts other divine religions much better than say Judiasm and Christianity.Calling them Ahl el-simmah or taking a levy noywithstanding, within the time frame of human 
developement and civility

A.Rehman 11 March 2008 at 8pm
I forgot to mention that the details about the portrayal of Arabs in the Old Testament were derived from a 1978 PhD dissertation written by a Terry B. Hammons at the University of Oklahoma, and titled "A Wild Ass of a Man": American Images of Arabs to 1948. My information, therefore, is documented. Where is the documentation for yours? My comment on Churchill was well placed because you had denied any relation between the speaker and the possibility of biased information in an Orientalist sense. Were we discussing the Pashtuns? I think not, yet you chose to quote Churchill on them since in your opinion they are the ‘most Arab non-Arabs’ — whatever that means. Oh, and what’s with the attitude in "
Said’s slothful scholarship fits a culture that is intellectually lazy,
historically non-introspective, unscientific, and lagging
technologically." ?? You seriously call Arab culture all THAT and expect not to be seen as completely biased? Have you not read anything about the history of Arabs? I will rejoin this discussion when I have the time. But I invite you to email me if you like, and I sincerely hope you would reconsider your choice of words as well as your attitudes towards Arabs. The little sympathy speech you gave at the start of your comment was overwhelmingly flooded by anti-Arab remarks both here and in your previous comments. 

Tololy 11 March 2008 at 9pm
I suspect it might have been Muhammad himself who chose to identify Arabs with the Biblical character of Ishmael. Personal opinion just like my personal opinion that the council of nicea was the congregation of glutonous power hungry men who wanted to craft a religion that doesn\’t conflict with whats currently available and hence crafted christianity in the shape it is today. that altered the original message, and even the core contents. that aside its an irrelevant opinion again. Doyou have any factual dispute with Churchill’s observations or are yougoing to just play the ad hominem game?  I found Churchill’sdescription to be straightforward and in keeping with what others havesaid about the Pashtuns. again irrelevant drivel, unless you concise and explain how you find them similar since your first hand knowledge of arabs and the pushtans (i assume) is non existant. as an arab and fairly familiar with the pushtans i don\’t see any semblance hence the argument can easily be brushed aside, and its always nice to ad hominem an irrelevant argument. Tribalismhas its advantages which is why it exists in the first place, but itisn’t conducive toward maintaining a modern nation-state. hmm there is where it fails, your argument. the muslim or arab world is not entirely a tribalistic system, and while tribalism is existant in some parts it is non existant in many others, and historically speaking the centers of development across the history of the region have been the ones lacking tribalism. so while its a contributing factor its not a major one in a lot of the most important areas. examples and i\’ll try to stretch it across history here; andalucia, jerusalem, beirut, and you can go on … 
<div style="margin-left: 40px;"> </div>Therehas been little torture by American troops and the abuses at Abu Ghraibwere met with prison sentences for those involved. Little is misleading, is that a comparitive word to the rest of the world ? history in general? so little torture is fine ? am sure they would have just shoved it under the rug if it was "little", but oh, they tried extraordinary rendition to resolve that but alas along the way they had to throw the habeas corpus  and redifine torture ( some are ok you know!) and legalize it because they were found out. someone who thinks "little" torture is ok should re-examin his moral code! read up and stop watching hannity please… But his erroneous belief that somehow the Arabs were just like theGermans or the Japanese and could be brought into the fold of the Westjust like these nations were in the wake of World War II. eh … so it\’s the iraqis fault that they don\’t prescribe to the american version of democracy, am sure its just that ! not that the president and whole cabinet didn\’t even know that there were sunni\’s and shia there "i thought they were muslims ? " remember that ? However, its foreign policyis frequently guided by the principle of supporting what it sees,rightly or wrongly, as the lesser of two evils.  America cannothandpick politicians and it’s wise to acknowledge that not all nationsare equally capable of democracy.  suharto, pinoche, saddam, franco, hitler (the irony that it was a bush back then too ), cordova, Sani Abacha, Ngo Dihn Diem, nuriega, pol pot, idi amin, batista, marcos, should i go on ? but thats just a simple mistake you know, the lesser of two evils ! ! ! well no ! one string that attaches the reason of the support is that they were the option that would have made more money. yes, yes only the american bipartisna democratic system works, not! Nottrue.  Much of the New Testament was apparently written in KoineGreek.  Also, Aramaic rather than Hebrew was the common language ofJews in the time of Jesus. twisting your own word, i was referring to the old testament (for the record you used the bible, which is based on the tanakha which is written in hebrew….hence my statement) . while that is true of the new testament, although not entirely clear of contention. What does my "blabber" have to do with a lack of free speech or democracy? oh and i was hopping for a constructive argument to point out how the US is at the pinnacle of free speech and democracy, alas am not even disappointed. but its ur freedom to blabber and my freedom to listen eh ? Americahas not criminalized the anti-war movement.  They’re as busy as ever inplaces like San Francisco.  I think you’ve been watching too much Arabtelevision. ;-) eh … i don\’t watch TV of any kind to be honest, but i read the <a href=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/22/AR2007072201141.html>washington post</a> sometimes <a href=http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-09-15-war-protest_N.htm>USA today</a> and since the language is vague the extention to <a href=http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/07/20070717-3.html>EO 13315</a> can be used for that. seems like you are the one that missed out on it. Even when these practices have been followed, it has been provided they conquered subsist as dhimmis. atleast they had no miscegenation laws for dhimmis, took the great USians up until 1967 to figure that one out, DUH ! so ya i think i\’ll prefer to be a dhimmi rather than a black in the united states, even to this day if given the option to time travel :P 

bambam 11 March 2008 at 9pm
not
really but you can’t blame me if i find irony in an ex-marine calling
himself a libertarian. Bambam, most members of teh US military are Libertarian. You really need to learn at least a LITTLE about the subject matter you wish to debate, before you jump in, man :) you have the right the hold whatever labels you
like, and i have the right to think of them in whichever manner i find
fit. "Libertarian" is a political philosophy, not a label. "Christian" is a religion, not a "label". And it sounds to me like you don’t have the rights that you think you do, in Jordan. You can apparrently go to prison for insulting my religious beliefs. And since I don’t really care what your opinion of Protestants is, I urge you to be careful. Wouldn’t want you to go to prison over nothing :) well
thank god for short, every altrication that i had with you has been
nothing but a hollier than thou mentality which can hardly be called
open minded. Seems to me that the last tiem I encountered you on this blog, you were slamming Christians. I found it offensive enough that I stopped reading Tololy’s blog for a while. Open minded? You? I don’t think so. That’s called "bigotry", bambam. 

Craig 11 March 2008 at 10pm
One must look at these events within the context of the times and
the practice prevailling at the time. At the time 1700 yrs and before ,
killing and savagery and enslaving was the norm not the exception.No, it wasn’t. That’s a myth that virtually every Arab I’ve ever talked to on the subject happens to believe in. It’s a convenient justification for the way Arab Muslims treated people in conquered lands. Nobody prior to Arabs treated conquered peoples so badly. The Romans, Greeks, Egyptians, etc all set up what amounted to trade empires in the middle-east, and left the native inhabitants alone as much as they could. The historical evidence of that is ample. 
Islam gave a better choice ,even if we frown upon it now, is better
than putting them to the sword. 
Nobody put anyone to the "sword" in teh ME, prior to the Prophet’s time. Again, that is a myth. Even when the Romans drove the Jews into exile – they didn’t EXTERMINATE the Jews, they merely drove them out of their homeland by force. And that is the worst example of brutality from teh ancient middle-east that I know of. 
You will know that more than 600 yrs
after that the Christians in Spain( Andalusia) did not give that choice
to the Muslims. The choice was between death and conversion. 
Actually, the chopices were three. Convert, leave or die. Most left. And why do you think Spaniards treated Muslims so harshly, Ahriman? If it’s true that Muslims had such great relations with the indigenous inhabitants of Spain for 700 years, why on earth would teh Spaniards have been so bloodthirsty in their revenge on Muslims? 
The
survival of the Jews and Christians in the Arab world at the zenieth of
the Islamic empire is a testament that Islam tolerates and accepts
other divine religions much better than say Judiasm and
Christianity.
Nonsense. There were pagan and jewish tribes living side by side in Medina when the Prophet arrived. A short time later, the Jews had been slaughtered, enslaved or converted. The pagans had been converted. And Medina was 100% Islamic. Virtually everywhere in the middle-east, in pre-Islamic times, Christians, Jews and Pagans co-existed without problems. Until Islam came along. Do a little research before running your mouth, Ahriman. 

Craig 11 March 2008 at 11pm
PS: Actually, the chopices were three. Convert, leave or
die. Most left. What I meant by "most left" was most berbers and Arabs left. Most non-Arab "Muslims" reverted to Christianity without much hesitation. Which makes one wonder about their status with their Arab and Berber conquerers, wouldn’t you say? And as far as I know, Spain is and was the only place in teh world that was ever successfully freed from Islamic rule. So we don’t really know what would have happened in Egypt, North Africa, etc if Arab Muslims had been driven out. Maybe the same. Maybe worse. Maybe better. But in the case of Spain, I’d say teh evidence is the people who lived under Arab Muslim rule had EXTREME resentment and hostility against their occupiers. 

Craig 11 March 2008 at 11pm
Bambam, atleast
they had no miscegenation laws for dhimmis, took the great USians up
until 1967 to figure that one out, DUH ! That’s interesting, considering slavery was rampant everywhere in the Arab world up until quite recently. And, in fact, black Africans who came to the Americas as slaves were sold into slavery by ARAB slave traders.  so ya i think i\’ll prefer to
be a dhimmi rather than a black in the united states, even to this day
if given the option to time travel :P Really? And do you think South Asians and South-East Asians are treated better in Saudi Arabia (for instance) right now, than blacks were in the US before the civil rights movement? I’d say rather the opposite, myself. 

Craig 11 March 2008 at 11pm
Bambam,
most members of teh US military are Libertarian. You really need to
learn at least a LITTLE about the subject matter you wish to debate,
before you jump in, man :) haha…. lol so if you volunteer to the military that makes you a libertarian ? then i am a priest in that case. your a "libertarian" right, so you heard of the principle of non-aggression, given the track of the US military i would call it anything but non aggressive. Ergo, the irony. i just had to break it down to you sowy :P "Libertarian"
is a political philosophy, not a label. "Christian" is a religion, not
a "label". And it sounds to me like you don’t have the rights that you
think you do, in Jordan. You can apparrently go to prison for insulting
my religious beliefs. And since I don’t really care what your opinion
of Protestants is, I urge you to be careful. Wouldn’t want you to go to
prison over nothing :) LOL ! hmmm i hate publicizing my blog not out of fear but out of principle, but if you happen to ask around am sure someone will point you in the right direction. and you will see what i exactly think of protestants, and many more …. told you i hold no punches and i hate discremination, oh and they are labels for ppl who like to limit them selves to their own boxed mentalities, and try to elevate them and call them belief !  So i appreciate the consideration but am doing fine. I found it offensive enough that I stopped reading
Tololy’s blog for a while. thank you sweet pie, i wasn’t even trying back then to be offensive (maybe some personal insecurity was the impetus beat me, you’ll have to pay me to psycho analyze you) and really am not even trying too hard now… JESUS ! facts without evidence are just opinions, and am not even going to tackle your opinion about islamic history or even try to contrast it with christian history, especially in regards to that last paragraph about pagans and jews. careful when treading about religious topics when am around because you don’t know what your getting your self into. i would hate it if you get THAT offended again 

bambam 11 March 2008 at 11pm
Craig, your comment about the trans-Atlantic slave  trade being mostly conducted by Arabs is WRONG! The traders were European and African. Let’s not start making things up now eh? 

http://africanhistory.about.com/library/weekly/aa080601a.htm

Tololy 11 March 2008 at 11pm
Tololy, I’m not talking about the TRADERS. I’m talking about the people who actually put black Africans into slavery, and sold them to the slave traders. Who were Arabs. From your link: It is estimated that during the 4 1/2 centuries of the
trans-Atlantic slave trade, Portugal was responsible for transporting over 4.5
million Africans (roughly 40% of the total). During the eighteenth century
however, when the slave trade accounted for the transport of a staggering 6
million Africans, Britain was the worst transgressor – responsible for almost
2.5 million. (A fact often forgotten by those who regularly cite Britain’s prime
role in the abolition of the slave trade.) Note the word "transporting". Your link also seems to go overboard on emphasizing West Africa. I watched a documentary just yesterday about the vast quantities of slaves who were transported by caravan through the Sahara and to North Africa. The Slave trade was quite important in the mediterranean ports. Your link does make a brief mention of this: Africans had been traded as slaves for centuries — reaching Europe via the
Islamic-run, trans-Saharan, trade routes. Slaves obtained from the Muslim
dominated North African coast however proved to be too well educated to be
trusted and had a tendency to rebellion. But doesn’t bother to document it, even on the map. That is a very "politically correct" presentation, and it’s wrong. 

Craig 11 March 2008 at 11pm
@craig since taloly handle the first part before i could decimate it I’ll just move to the second Really?
And do you think South Asians and South-East Asians are treated better
in Saudi Arabia (for instance) right now, than blacks were in the US
before the civil rights movement? I’d say rather the opposite, myself. gand your saying the mexican in the US are treated any better now ? oh i forgot the USians are not limited by their borders, three words come to mind, sweatshop child slavery. I suggest you read up on how much the US is an integral part of that, and how they encourage it and are willing to be silent about genocides to maintain it … tough luck, try a different route. remember am not arguing that arabs and muslims are any better, am just arguing the US isnt all that at all ! 

bambam 11 March 2008 at 11pm
The whole "new" slave trade was started by the Dutch

Qwaider قويدر 11 March 2008 at 11pm
and your saying the mexican in the US are treated any better now ?

Yes, bambam, that is what I am saying. Absolutely, and unequivocally, that is what I am saying.

tough luck, try a different route.

Why? Your claims are laughable, you think you "defeated" my argument with them? :D

Craig 11 March 2008 at 11pm
Some people think that by reciting the same lie over and over again, it somehow magically transforms into truth!

Qwaider قويدر 12 March 2008 at 12am
I watched a documentary just yesterday about the vast quantities of slaves who were transported by caravan through the Sahara and to North Africa. The Slave trade was quite important in the mediterranean ports."

Yes and in that documentary they said that those who were running the caravans were Tuareg who are Berber and not Arab. They even interviewed them, how could you so conveniently miss that ? Here is the link to the documentary for reference.

PH 12 March 2008 at 12am
Read Joshua at above link before responding God warrior. Jews put all inhabitants of Palestine to the sword including animals. Thats thousnads of years before Islam. Their God told them and according to Joshua they were punished when some body took some silver and garments and they stoned the culprit and all his family to death to appease their God(what they say). Jewish living in Madina (four tribes) some of them violated a peace treaty and adult men only were killed ( 140), some were pardoned if they agreed to teach Muslims some of their skills. If Muslims finished the Jews and christians how come we have Arab jews living in every Arab country some till now, how come we have Christians with their old churches in Jerusalem and Nazareth and Bietlahem and every corner of the Arab world. The are Arab olive skinned christian and jews and can trace their family trees to time immomorial. In Spain God warrior, muslims protected the jews from christians out for their blood, jewish came in droves to live in muslim contolled areas in Europe and Spain to avoid being slaughterd by Christians for killing Jesus and this incesed the spaniards the more that the jewish turned against their protectors (the muslims) is another story. Hate drips from you and your posts&nbsp;warrior and reason is way beyond you, you are here to just spew hate and venom not to argue with logic and reason and facts. Iam not incapabable of abusing 100 to the minute and in as many languages but Iam civilized and above that and by the way I have argued with the likes of you face to face too till they became red and blue while I never missed a beat nor lost my cool, you know why? because you are not my target as a person but the misconception and the ideas are my targets.&nbsp; 

A.Rehman 12 March 2008 at 12am
Citizen patrols (vigilante) mostly white supermacists and xenophopic racists round-up and sometimes shoot Mexicans and other Latinos crossing the border at sight. It is like the wild west down there.But those are minority who don’t represnet the true Americans like me and my neighbours and are looked upon as renegades though tolerated by authorities.Criag most likely is one such member.

A.Rehman 12 March 2008 at 12am
PH  – Read ROOTS then commnet

A.Rehman 12 March 2008 at 12am
Sorry PH did not see the quotation marks. Withdraw my comment.

A.Rehman 12 March 2008 at 12am
@craigy … my blind little ducky … read my son, for maybe you’ll evolve some eyes, oh sorry…. intelligently design eyes… <a href=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/picture_gallery/05/americas_florida_tomato_picker/html/5.stm> here </a> <a href=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1200644.stm>and here</a> <a href=http://www.goveg.com/workerRights_immigrant.asp>and here</a> <a href=http://www.ciw-online.org/>and here</a> <a href=http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-54588527.html>and here</a> <a href=http://www.organicconsumers.org/irrad/slaughterworkers.cfm/>and here</a> …..etc 

bambam 12 March 2008 at 12am
Sorry, Toloy for the recomment :)  the comment wasn’t formatted properly I had a problem with your comment box. I hope it works this time."I watched a
documentary just yesterday about the vast quantities of slaves who were
transported by caravan through the Sahara and to North Africa. The
Slave trade was quite important in the mediterranean ports."Yes and in that documentary they said that those who were running the
caravans were <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuareg">Tuareg</a> who are Berber and not Arab. They even interviewed
them, how could you so conveniently miss that ? Here is <a href="http://anglolibyan.blogspot.com/2008/03/libyan-documentary.html">the link</a> to the
documentary for reference.@ A.Rehman :I have seen the mini series.  Thanks.

PH 12 March 2008 at 12am
The editor is kinda buggy, I apologize for that PH. Plus, I was doing some technical work on it so I kinda messed it up for a while. It’s fine now. 

Tololy 12 March 2008 at 12am
PH, Yes and in that documentary they said that those who were running the caravans were Tuareg who are Berber and not Arab. And the Tuareg were trasnporting the slaves to Arab slave markets. What is your point? Also, I didn’t mention other places where Muslims (and Arabs) were heavily involved in African slavery, such as the Horn of Africa. Here is a complet book on the subject, for those who are interested: http://books.google.com/books?id=sasFc2yN7AcC&pg=PT10&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=0_0&sig=ej8aapmgTEL4no8fdcS6gtwiJDI#PPT13,M1 

Craig 12 March 2008 at 1am
bambam, your comments are getting increasingly silly. If you believe for one second that immigrants in teh US have it anything like as bad as "guest workers" in teh Arab world do, you are deluding yourself. Which seems to eb something you enjoy doing quite a bit, based on your repeated mistaken commenst about the United States. I’m not here to educate you. So I’ll stop replying to your comments now. They are unworthy of reply, and that would be true even if they didn’t have an abusive edge to them. I’ve corrected you enough times, and you never even bothered to acknowledge you had said anything that was untrue, in the past.

Craig 12 March 2008 at 1am
Citizen patrols
(vigilante) mostly white supermacists and xenophopic racists round-up
and sometimes shoot Mexicans and other Latinos crossing the border at
sight. It is like the wild west down there Are you on drugs, Ahriman? At least bambam has an excuse – he’s probably never even been here. What’s yours? You were born and raised in the United States, were you not? You show us your "high quality" education, once again. 

Craig 12 March 2008 at 1am
Hate drips from you
and your posts&nbsp;warrior and reason is way beyond you, you are
here to just spew hate and venom not to argue with logic and reason and
facts. Facts, like those ones you just gave? :D Dude, everything you said in that one long post was an outright lie, as anyone who bothers to consult the history books can tell you. Jews came to spain WITH the Arab invaders, for instance, and were considered by Spaniards to have been collaborators with Muslims. And the fact of the matter is that Jews got to Europe in the first place in order to ESCAPE from Muslim rule. And when they were also persecuted in Europe (after Islamic incursions into Euprope, not before) that trend was slightly reversed. Most of the world’s Jewery remained in EUrope right up until 1948. That is a simple FACT, Ahriman. To this day there are more Jews in the United States than anywhere else in the world. What you said about Jews in Medina is also an outright lie. You tell so many lies, that it is not even worth correcting all of them. And it seems obvious you tell your lies deliberately. How else do you get from a couple of isolated incidents on the border, to an Army of white supremacists rounding up and executing latinos on the border? That’s INSANE, man. And, you neglected to mention the fact that illegals are victimizing far more Americans than vice versa. Why is that? 

Craig 12 March 2008 at 1am
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7290562.stm A Jordanian court has sentenced a French national of Palestinian origin to three months in jail for slandering King Abdullah. Free speech in Jordan, right? Ahriman, how many times have you slandered President Bush on this blog, and elsewhere? And yet, you walk free! Isn’t America beautiful? :) 

Craig 12 March 2008 at 1am
reposting the comment to PH, since it got hosed up: Yes and in that documentary they said that those who were running the caravans were Tuareg who are Berber and not Arab. And
the Tuareg were trasnporting the slaves to Arab slave markets. What is
your point? Also, I didn’t mention other places where Muslims (and
Arabs) were heavily involved in African slavery, such as the Horn of
Africa. Here is a complete book on the subject, for those who are
interested: http://books.google.com/books?id=sasFc2yN7AcC&pg=PT10&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=0_0&sig=ej8aapmgTEL4no8fdcS6gtwiJDI PS: Yes that is the documentary I watched. So, you watched the whole thing to, eh? What was your opinion of it? As I recall, I don’t like you much but I think you might agree with me that the British guy was way too cheezy. Too much the British "gentleman adventurer" character. The "Great White Hunter and his trusty native guide", except in this case his trust native guide was a hot Libyan chick that he was flirting with on camera constantly :O Still, it’s well worth seeing. 

Craig 12 March 2008 at 1am
At least bambam has an excuse – he’s probably never even been here. LOL ! Ya Right… 

bambam 12 March 2008 at 1am
Free speech in Jordan, right? Ahriman, how many times have you slandered President Bush on this blog, and elsewhere? And yet, you walk free! Isn’t America beautiful? :) America is beautiful if they don’t have Criags and that is why Good Decent freedom loving Americans like me and the majority are standing up o the Criags-like to maintain freedoms and rights and not turn America to plice state. Slander is you know slander and abuse without proof or as in lies. But if you say Bush mislead the Americans about Iraq like 75% of American say it is a fact and not slander thus not prosecuted. You knpw you can be prosecuted for slandering the Queen of England and many other heads of states like in South Korea and Singapore and Japan’d emperor so why not King Abdullah. Here in America if you slander anybody without proof you may pay millions through your nose  you wish you get three months in jail.

A.Rehman 12 March 2008 at 2am
Come on warrior Craig don’t you feel betrayed ( if you are not a zionist yourself) by the fact that Israel is using you ,that the Zionest are using you. Couple of months ago I was watching CNN I think and here is a jewish woman who lived in America whole her life, her family saved from Hitler by Americans, born, raised and educated in America.. campainged for the Jewish state and collected tens of millions of donations from some gullible Americans to fund illegal settlements in the West Bank, moved hereself to the West Bank to live here old age there and you know what she said in her first interview from there "" I never felt America is my home and Americans are my people, this my home and here are my people""Quote unquote. I felt deeeply betrayed as an American and hurt by such ungratefullness. I forgot her name and if you insist I will look it up for you.But may be you know who is she because she collected mostly Evangelists money.  Not only the fact she feels that way about America the country that gave her all hurts but also the fact that she said it with I don’t care a damn attitude. Any reasonable American will feel hurt, don’t you??

A.Rehman 12 March 2008 at 2am
Craig, 
i don’t get it, are you teaching Arabs their history? American Christians are brainwashed to believe that muslims are killers and were no different than berbers, have dragged and slaughtered jews out of their land, its part of your belief that you should defend jews to get their homeland back, isn’t this a major part of your feels toward islam? this is how you are programmed to see things, that arabs have no rights and have brought all this upon themselves because its the lesser of all evils… i guess in all american policies arabs were the losing part in all equations, i want to tell you something, you don’t know the profound teaching of Islam, i am a Jordanian Christian, i have been living here all my life, i was never discriminated against because of my religion and i was treated as equal to muslim citizens here, i was born in an arab culture, a cumulative learning culture like every culture, even yours introduces and improves its overall thoughts and philosophy, arabic is my language and i read the quran, and its not easy at all stating that im a native arabic speaker and i can assure you of the fact that killing children, women, elder people, and cutting trees is prohibited in Islam, i read it everywhere and its not my religion. so take a breathe and give understanding a chance, no matter how accurate history books were, its still biased!

Tala 12 March 2008 at 3am
Tala, i don’t get it, are
you teaching Arabs their history? Not at all. I’m correcting some common myths Arabs tell about their own history. OK, not just "some" Arabs, but most, from what I can see :) You realize, of course, that the middle-east has a long history and relatively speaking very little of it belongs to either "Arabs" or Muslims, right? American Christians are brainwashed
to believe that muslims are killers and were no different than berbers,
have dragged and slaughtered jews out of their land, its part of your
belief that you should defend jews to get their homeland back, isn’t
this a major part of your feels toward islam? Nope. That isn’t what American Christians are taught. It’s not what Americans are taught, either. There isn’t anything about Islam or Arabs in teh Christyian Bible, because there was no Islam, and there were no Arabs, when the Bible was written. I learned what I know of Islam from speaking to Muslims about it, and from reading the Quran. I admit I haven’t read any Hadiths, and have no wish to, as in my noin-Muslim opinion it is the Hadiths that have corrupted Islam. As far as Jews and Israel, everything I know about Judaism comes from reading the old testament in the Bible, which doesn’t seem to be much like Judaism as it is practiced, from what I can tell. I have no love for Israel – I see Israel as an ally, no more and no less. As far as Jews go, I grew up around a lot of Jewish Americans when I was a kid, as everyone else who lives in New Jersey or New York does. I’ve always thought of Jews as being a little stand-offish. They don’t seem very friendly towards non-Jews, to me, and I none of my closest friends weer Jews. I did grow up in non-white areas though, and most of my friends were either Puerto Rican or black, by default. this is how you are
programmed to see things, that arabs have no rights and have brought
all this upon themselves because its the lesser of all evils… i guess
in all american policies arabs were the losing part in all equations Before 9/11 most Americans didn’t know a damn thing about Arabs or Islam, and didn’t much care to learn. US schools stree pre-Islamic times when they teach the history of the middle-east. That’s just the way it is. They do cover the crusades, but they do so as part of teaching European History. Religion is not taught in US public schools. i
want to tell you something, you don’t know the profound teaching of
Islam, i am a Jordanian Christian, i have been living here all my life,
i was never discriminated against because of my religion and i was
treated as equal to muslim citizens here OK. But non-Jordanian Christians get perseuted in Jordan. Do you have a problem with that? Or does your warm feeling for Islam outweigh your sense of obligation to your fellow Christians? i was born in an arab
culture, a cumulative learning culture like every culture, even yours
introduces and improves its overall thoughts and philosophy, arabic is
my language and i read the quran, and its not easy at all stating that
im a native arabic speaker and i can assure you of the fact that
killing children, women, elder people, and cutting trees is prohibited
in Islam, i read it everywhere and its not my religion. Yes. I know. And yet, my best friend, who is an Arab Muslim who lives in the middle-east, support Hezbollah. Even though she knows Hezbollah murdered friends of mine. What can be done, when Muslims say their religion doesn’t support murder, and yet they support Islamic murderers? Doesn’t "Hezbollah" mean "Party of God"? How can Muslims tolerate mass murdering monsters claiming to be representatives of God, when they at the same time claim Islam does not condone such behavior? It’s a problem. so take a
breathe and give understanding a chance, no matter how accurate history
books were, its still biased! I was doing that, a couple years ago. Really… look at the blog archives from 3 years ago, where I was commenting. I used to try pretty hard to understand, and to make myself understood. But, I don’t any more. Too many times I was rewarded with ridicule and abuse. Enough. So now my "cause" on Arab blogs is to point it out when people say things that aren’t true. Not to change anyone’s mind, but just so that they don’t get away with spreading tehir lies unchallenged. Because, whether you want to admit it or not, a lot of compleet BS gets told on Arab blogs. 

Craig 12 March 2008 at 4am
Tololy, this text editer is driving me crazy! :P Is there any way to enable a "preview" so we can see how it’s going to come out? 

Craig 12 March 2008 at 4am
Craig, I think that is doable but will take me some time to implement. Sorry the editor is buggy, I tried changing it into a simpler one yesterday but that one did not translate many HTML tags into actions so ALL comments up to yesterday looked like a mess. I’ll see what I can do though! 

Tololy 12 March 2008 at 9am
Will the Jordanian government allow me to protest in front the Israeli Embassy for the crimes that Israel committed??? we all know the answer to my question,it seems the Jordanian government has encouraged this protest to get even with Al Jazeera because of this <a href = "http://www.aljazeera.net/channel/archive/archive?ArchiveId=90919">
<table width="100%" border="0">
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<td class="tdHeadline" id="tdMainHeader" valign="middle">الدور الأردني في المخططات الأميركية <img id="imgAudio" style="CURSOR: hand" onclick="PopReadonlyMetadataAudio()" alt="" src="http://www.aljazeera.net/CHANNEL/KEngine/Imgs/audio.jpg" border="0" /> <img id="imgVedio" style="CURSOR: hand" onclick="PopReadonlyMetadataVideo()" alt="" src="http://www.aljazeera.net/CHANNEL/KEngine/Imgs/video.jpg" border="0" /></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr>
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مقدم الحلقة: </td>
<td dir="rtl" align="right">فيصل القاسم</td></tr>
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ضيوف الحلقة: </td>
<td dir="rtl" align="right">أسعد أبو خليل: أستاذ العلوم السياسية – جامعة كاليفورنيا محمود الخرابشة: عضو مجلس النواب الأردني</td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table></a>

Alurduni Alhurr 12 March 2008 at 10am
Here is the right <a href = "http://www.aljazeera.net/channel/archive/archive?ArchiveId=90919"> link</a>

Alurduni Alhurr 12 March 2008 at 10am
[...] how people are willing to protest against certain sentences said in a TV show, but they won’t be moved by the blatant gender discrimination in Jordanian law and legal [...]

Tololy’s Box » Blog Archive » Some Killers Are Spared 12 March 2008 at 12pm
Before 9/11 most Americans didn’t know a damn thing about Arabs or Islam, and didn’t much care to learn. US schools stree pre-Islamic times when they teach the history of the middle-east. That’s just the way it is
exactly, maybe its the part they never really wanted you to know or see and i don’t think muslims did a good job making it known as historians. but there are lots of arabic litterature and peotry books that talks about the islamic society in the days of Muhammad and even before Islam which could be referenced if there were good translations of it. the history you know and i am not saying its not true, is what is emphasized to backup an understanding for a tagged label of muslim violence which is not the correct explaination for what is happening today. the arab world has been struggling with occupation of all kinds; military, economic, dictation of internal and external policies, oppression to freedoms and yes, we have a lot of people who died over the decades in Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan that you knew nothing about before 9/11, there is a distinction between teachings of the religion and the practices related a culture that we truly didn’t have much hand as nations in developing it since the early ninteen hundreds if you want to ignore the ottmans for a bit. so when a muslim comes up to you in this time and says in the name of Allah i will kill, its the only way he knows to make himself heard. no one left an open door without wanting something in return or aknowledging what we went through or the least to suggest unbiased justice, America has been Israel’s ally since day one. America has benefited a lot from the arab oil and it did help the arab countries develop in return but it took a very essential element, their true freedom to decide for themselves and the believe that they need to be monitored. 
about the foreign Christians who were deported, personally i am against it and my parents were for it. a country’s advancement is measured by its ability to protect the most vulnerable rights who are children, women, elderly and minorities, to begin with we are a minority in Jordan, Christians are 4% of the people here, but are esablished as essential part of the society and are known for being peaceful, there is no involvement as Christians in politics or parties and Catholics, Greek Orthodox and Latin sects have no missionary practices at all, not because its wrong but there is no need for it, families in Jordan are identified by last names clearly for being Christian, Muslim and has a lot to do with the tribalism and long long family trees and family history by roots, regions and origins, even for Palestinian families are all quite known. so having foreign missionaries is like messing with something that Jordan is known to have stable, that families itself will rebel if their children decided to convert, and if you come to the law part of it, if you convert a muslim he might be killed and yes like honor killing it would pass, so wisely until people absorb concepts like freedom of choosing a faith and adopt laws for it, its not wise to send missionaries here, its chaos over chaos, its not a matter of freedom of speech or freedom of practice anymore if you got what i mean, and for the record if Evangelists were listed as Christian sects in the Jordanian Law, there is no way they would have been deported, this is my understanding. 

Tala 12 March 2008 at 1pm
Wow, what a discussion going on here. I hae been trying to follow it, and wishing I could jump in and join you all. I was wishing I could sit in a real room with Tololy, Craig and Bambam and mediate a bit. It must be either the mother in me or inner diplomat. :) Tololy and Bam, I’ve met you both and really respect you both, learn from you greatly. I do think Craig has made some points that shouldn’t be dismissed to easily (what they are, I forget, I am distracted right now) and people like him ARE valuable for The Grand Discussion. He is obviously not getting all his info from Jihad Watch nor the more vitriolic anti-Muslim camp. He is bringing up stuff I WISH we could all blog about, but since I sortof want to stay in country, won’t. Arabs ARE mentioned in the New Testament, as some of the first who heard the gospel preached in their own language. I have a copy of Dr. Tony Maalouf’s book "Arabs in the Shadow of Israel" and his take on discovering the Arab in the Hebrew scriptures if you woudl like. Tala, I appreciate your contribution too. I must say,  as a  Christian,  I am appalled at what is passed of as ‘history’ in my child’s curriculum at school. It is one view of history, yes, just like America used to teach. But here are Christian kids, paying huge tuition at a Christian school, and end up memorizing the Quran for Arabic, Social Studies, Mehani and even math! Things that for a Christian, are not true. True freedom of religion isn’t about the freedom to share faith, but the freedom to teach my kids my faith is true, if that is what is true for me. Thats all I have time for now. ciao! 

kinzi 12 March 2008 at 2pm
Everyone is significant in a discussion. I second what Kinzi said about this. I also agree with you, Kinzi, on Christian education. However, one must always remember that Jordan is a predominantly Muslim society, and as such, it is up to Christians themselves to network and enforce their teachings within their educational facilities, since that is allowed I believe. Moreover, I can’t honestly say I have heard of a Christian school here teaching Quran to Chrisitians, and if that is the case, I wonder why that happens. 

Tololy 12 March 2008 at 2pm
kinzi, i don’t deny that ! am not arguing for the arabs or the muslims here at all… am just arguing the hollier than thou argument that the world should count its blessings because the USians are here… thats what irked my replies, stuff like this won’t happen in the US, or that the USian has absolute freedom to do and say whatever he likes without even the slightest over sight or fear… thats the idea that is entirely mythical and has no bases neither in history, personal experience, or whats going on right now… 

bambam 12 March 2008 at 3pm
Admiral William J.Fallon quits his post as Army’s top commander in the Middles East over President Bush"s policy to use force against Iran. Qudus to free and brave Americans. The wind of change is blowing stronger than ever.

A.Rehman 12 March 2008 at 3pm
Kinzi, i totally understand what you are talking about because i studied this curriculm myself, i memorized Quran for mahfoozat with all the vocab and explaination in arabic class, read all the small verses quoted in biology books at every new section, social studies and limited history, books in the national educational system and its far much better than the gulf need to be revised because it doesn’t allow the student to examine the knowledge critically, nor it helps him/her extend their intellectual and cultural horizons. sabis is a wonderful scientific curriculm for schools but doesn’t elaborate on arabic history neither, IB is great research based method but also doesn’t support building around arabic culture and history, my school was catholic and i did Tawjihi, what we learned there is that Islam is part of our culture that i cant deny, part of living here and being a minority makes it a necessity to learn all these things, how i dealt with it is through understanding the explaination behind each comand that contradicted my belief and seeing that this is how they see it working, and i would have my own explaination for my own set of belief but i never opened a discussion that im right, you are wrong, it was a two way to look at things, it was a richer experience for me because i knew more and if any was interested in knowing Christianity i would gladly help because at the end of the day its a personal choice that i cant impose on others.   

Tala 12 March 2008 at 3pm
Some may argue that the Bush presidency was the worst in terms of tampling freedoms and rights and bullying in America and all over the globe.I don’t disagree with that. His staunchest allies have voiced that. But I like to see the positive side of this presidency – I think it gave us a pause to stop and rethink our attitudes toward others and to examine our conscience like never before- do we really want to be the world bully, do we want to bomb to smithereen anybody who disagree with us.? Do we want a minority special interests to dictate to  us what to do and how to behave and act in this increasingly a global village.
Good things can rise out of bad because humans deep down are basically good.

A.Rehman 12 March 2008 at 3pm
Tala: "the history
you know and i am not saying its not true, is what is emphasized
to backup an understanding for a tagged label of muslim violence which
is not the correct explaination for what is happening today."What is the correct explanation then, in your opinion? 
Tala: "the arab
world has been struggling with occupation of all kinds; military,
economic, dictation of internal and external policies, oppression to
freedoms and yes, we have a lot of people who died over the decades in
Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan"Centuries, is more like it. Millenia, in fact. Why is that my fault, as an American? Why do I have to suffer for the problems of teh Arab world? I didn’t create those problems. In fact, the "Arab World" was born with all of those problems. None of the places you named was even "Arab" at all, until they were invaded and occupied over a thousand years ago. And what about Persia (Iran)? And it was Arabs who converted the Turks to Islam, and attempted to use them against Persian Muslims, who had grown restless, resentful and threatening. Whose fault is it that the Turks took control of the Arab world? Not mine. Not America’s. And do you want to talk about the Crusades? What caused the Crusades, in your opinion? Who invaded and occupied whose land, first? And by the way, the Crusaders were Catholics, aided by Orthodox Christians. Not Protestants, which is what I am. And which is what the baptists that Jordan deported are. 
Tala: "that you knew nothing about
before 9/11, there is a distinction between teachings of the religion
and the practices related a culture that we truly didn’t have much hand
as nations in developing it since the early ninteen hundreds if you
want to ignore the ottmans for a bit."Arabs havben’t had control of their own destiny for over a thousand years. It was Europeans (with American pressure) who gave Arabs their independence in the last century. Westerners only occupied Arab countries for a few decades. To hear the story told, it sounds like Westereners have been messing with Arabs all along, and that’s just not the case. 
Tala: "so when a muslim comes up to you
in this time and says in the name of Allah i will kill, its the only
way he knows to make himself heard. no one left an open door without
wanting something in return or aknowledging what we went through or the
least to suggest unbiased justice"
The entire developing world can make the same claim, but nobody else is resorting to those methods. In fact, the United States has been tampering with Latin America for more than 200 years. We have never done anything in teh Arab world that’s even close to the level of interference and domination we’ve put in practice in Latin America. I doubt anyone could even count the number of times teh US has toppled a government in Latin America. 
Tala: "America has been Israel’s ally since
day one."I think that is the whole case Muslims have against the US, right there, and everything else is just an excuse. 
It is slightly different with Iran, because Iran really was a US client prior to 1979. No Arab country has ever been a US client state. What I’m saying is that Iranians have a better claim to mkae of having a grievance against the US than Arabs do. A grievance unrelated to Israel, that is. 
Tala: "America has benefited a lot from the arab oil and it did help
the arab countries develop in return but it took a very essential
element, their true freedom to decide for themselves and the believe
that they need to be monitored."Jordan doesn’t have oil, does it? Nor does Egypt, or Syria. Or Lebanon. And Arabs kinda benefit from selling the oil, wouldn’t you say? The US hasn’t bought any oil from Iran in 30 years. Not one barrel. And the US has also had unilateral sanctions on Iran since 1979. It doesn’t seem to have effected Iran, one way or another. They sell their oil to Europe and China. They trade with everyon except the US. Iran is doing neither better nor worse than Arab countries in the region, in general. Sorry, but I think this one is a false argument :) 
Tala: "about the foreign Christians who were deported, personally i am
against it and my parents were for it. a country’s advancement is
measured by its ability to protect the most vulnerable rights who are
children, women, elderly and minorities, to begin with we are a
minority in Jordan, Christians are 4% of the people here, but are
esablished as essential part of the society and are known for being
peaceful, there is no involvement as Christians in politics or parties
and Catholics, Greek Orthodox and Latin sects have no missionary
practices at all"In Jordan, you mean. Catholics are among the most aggressive with missionary work, and have been from the beginning. The Eastern Orthodox Church used to do missionary work, but for the last 1000 years or so it has been in extreme distress and for the most part has stopped with that, because it’s been in survival mode. This was especially true after the Soviets took control of virtually all Orthodox countries in Europe and Asia, and outlawed religion as part of their communist (atheist) doctrine. Even now, after the fall of the Soviet Union, most of those formelrly Orthodox Europeans and Central Asians remain atheists. I don’t know what the future of the Eastern Church will be, but things aren’t looking good for them. 
Tala: "not because its wrong but there is no need for
it, families in Jordan are identified by last names clearly for being
Christian, Muslim and has a lot to do with the tribalism and long long
family trees and family history by roots, regions and origins, even for
Palestinian families are all quite known."
But Christians are all called on to spread the word, Tala. Same as Muslims. If it’s OK for Muslims to prosletyze, but it’s not OK for Christians, that in itself is a form of persecution as well. Even if Christians have come to believe it is voluntary. That isn’t how Christians in teh rest of teh world are. 
Tala: "so having foreign
missionaries is like messing with something that Jordan is known to
have stable, that families itself will rebel if their children decided
to convert, and if you come to the law part of it, if you convert a
muslim he might be killed and yes like honor killing it would pass, so
wisely until people absorb concepts like freedom of choosing a faith
and adopt laws for it"
I understand. I’ve said before that I think it’s foolish for Christians to do missionary work in Muslim countries. But my understanding is that these Protestants who were deported were trying to convert other Christians to their denomination, not Muslims. Is that incorrect? 
Tala: "its not wise to send missionaries here, its
chaos over chaos, its not a matter of freedom of speech or freedom of
practice anymore if you got what i mean, and for the record if
Evangelists were listed as Christian sects in the Jordanian Law, there
is no way they would have been deported, this is my understanding. "
How could Protestants not be recognized as Christians, under Jordanian law? Nearly half of all the world’s Christians, are Protestant. I’m Protestant. Most Americans are Protestant. There is going to be hell to pay if Arab countries try to pretend that Protestants aren’t Christian. Ask the Pope about that one :)Thanks you for your input. I appreciate you taking the time to try to expalin things froma  Jordanian Christian’s point of view :) 
 
 

Craig 13 March 2008 at 12am
Nearly half of all the world’s Christians, are Protestant. I’m Protestant. Most Americans are Protestant. There is going to be hell to pay if Arab
countries try to pretend that Protestants aren’t Christian. Ask the Pope about that one :)

geez protestants with all its denominations which might as well be treated seperately, but that aside the christian population of the world is 2.1 billion of which 674 million are protestants ….thats not even anywhere close to 50% (your half) plus its not that different in the states either … its a slightly higher percentage but not close to half of the christians. plus they were specifically talking about evangelical branches of the church. I am not going to bother with the rest …. so get ur facts right before getting defensive about your precious pentacostals or whatever u follow

bambam 13 March 2008 at 1am
Arabs havben’t had control of their own destiny for over a thousand years. It was Europeans (with American pressure) who gave Arabs their independence in the last century. Westerners only occupied Arab countries for a few decades. To hear the story told, it sounds like Westereners have been messing with Arabs all along, and that’s just not the case.

where the fuck you get those fact from Graig ,is it Fox or CNN?,you have been ignorant for so long and and Iam afraid,you will be the same way till the day you die,it just amazing and disgusting at the same time.

Alurduni Alhurr 13 March 2008 at 1am
Bambam: "geez
protestants with all its denominations which might as well be treated
seperately, but that aside the christian population of the world is 2.1
billion of which 674 million are protestants ….  thats not even
anywhere close to 50% (your half) plus its not that different in the
states either … its a slightly higher percentage but not close to half
of the christians." Nearly 70% of Americans are Protestants. I’m getting tired of correcting yoiu. Keep your ignorant bigotry to yourself.   Bambam: "plus they were specifically talking about
evangelical branches of the church. I am not going to bother with the
rest …. so get ur facts right before getting defensive about your
precious pentacostals or whatever u follow" My facts? Your statemnt here is so silly I don’t even know how to reply to it. Alurduni, I’m no stranger to your abusive comments to and about about Americans. I think I first saw you pissing on AMericans over at Nataha’s blog 3 or 4 years ago. Who cares? You’re just another Arab fruitcake with his head embedded in his derriere. You never do anything but insult people who piss you off. That’s your whole purpose for existing. You are exactly the cartoon "Arab" character that everyone else tells me I should pretend doesn’t actually exist. Do the Arab world a favor, and shut up. 

Craig 13 March 2008 at 2am
<table cellspacing="3" cellpadding="3" bgcolor="#ccffff" border="1">
<tbody>
<tr bgcolor="#87b8ff">
<th valign="bottom" align="center">Denomination</th>
<th valign="bottom" align="center">1990 Est. Adult Pop.</th>
<th valign="bottom" align="center">2001 Est. Adult Pop.</th>
<th valign="bottom" align="center"><a href="http://www.adherents.com/rel_USA.html#2004total">2004 Est. Total Pop.</a></th>
<th valign="bottom" align="center">Est. % of U.S. Pop., 2001</th>
<th valign="bottom" align="center">% Change 1990 – 2001</th></tr>
<tr>
<td>Catholic</td>
<td align="right">46,004,000</td>
<td align="right">50,873,000</td>
<td align="right">71,796,719</td>
<td align="right">24.5%</td>
<td align="right">+11%</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>Baptist</td>
<td align="right">33,964,000</td>
<td align="right">33,830,000</td>
<td align="right">47,744,049</td>
<td align="right">16.3%</td>
<td align="right">0%</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>Methodist/Wesleyan</td>
<td align="right">14,174,000</td>
<td align="right">14,150,000</td>
<td align="right">19,969,799</td>
<td align="right">6.8%</td>
<td align="right">0%</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>Lutheran</td>
<td align="right">9,110,000</td>
<td align="right">9,580,000</td>
<td align="right">13,520,189</td>
<td align="right">4.6%</td>
<td align="right">+5%</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>Presbyterian</td>
<td align="right">4,985,000</td>
<td align="right">5,596,000</td>
<td align="right">7,897,597</td>
<td align="right">2.7%</td>
<td align="right">+12%</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>Pentecostal/Charismatic</td>
<td align="right">3,191,000</td>
<td align="right">4,407,000</td>
<td align="right">6,219,569</td>
<td align="right">2.1%</td>
<td align="right">+38%</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>Episcopalian/Anglican</td>
<td align="right">3,042,000</td>
<td align="right">3,451,000</td>
<td align="right">4,870,373</td>
<td align="right">1.7%</td>
<td align="right">+13%</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>Judaism</td>
<td align="right">3,137,000</td>
<td align="right">2,831,000</td>
<td align="right">3,995,371</td>
<td align="right">1.3%</td>
<td align="right">-10%</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>Latter-day Saints/Mormon</td>
<td align="right">2,487,000</td>
<td align="right">2,697,000</td>
<td align="right">3,806,258</td>
<td align="right">1.3%</td>
<td align="right">+8%</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>Churches of Christ</td>
<td align="right">1,769,000</td>
<td align="right">2,593,000</td>
<td align="right">3,659,483</td>
<td align="right">1.2%</td>
<td align="right">+47%</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>Congregational/ United Church of Christ</td>
<td align="right">599,000</td>
<td align="right">1,378,000</td>
<td align="right">1,944,762</td>
<td align="right">0.7%</td>
<td align="right"><!–+130%–></td></tr>
<tr>
<td>Jehovah’s Witnesses</td>
<td align="right">1,381,000</td>
<td align="right">1,331,000</td>
<td align="right">1,878,431</td>
<td align="right">0.6%</td>
<td align="right">-4%</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>Assemblies of God</td>
<td align="right">660,000</td>
<td align="right">1,106,000</td>
<td align="right">1,560,890</td>
<td align="right">0.5%</td>
<td align="right">+68%</td></tr></tbody></table>

A.Rehman 13 March 2008 at 2am
Ahrriman, the important part of your chart was the 24% of Americans that are Catholic. The US is 88% Christian. Do the math :) Thanks for proving bambam wrong for me. What he said was so obviously incorrect, I wasn’t going to bother. His time would be better served teaching his Grandmother to suck eggs than to give lessons to an American Protestant about PROTESTANT America. By the way, bambam, not that it’s any of your business but I’m not Pentacostal. Like most American Anglos, I was raised Episcopalian (Anglican) because my ancestors were members of the Church of England (their state Church, if you didn’t know) because they were English. I haven’t attended an Episcopalian service in over 20 years, though. I choose Churches based on the quality of their services now, which I suppose makes me a non-denominational Protestant. I do believe people like me (non-denominational Protestants) are in the majority now, but I’m not sure about that. Technically, Baptists are the largest Protestant denomination in teh United States. Mike Huckabee is an ordained baptist minister. And it was Arab baptists that Jordan deported. So, youn should be very glad that Mike Huckabee is out of the running for President of the United States, because I think he’d have had some nice things in store for Jordan! Maybe even elevation to "Axis of Evil" status :P Seriously, this isn’t something you should be happy about Jordan messing around with. Unless you are suicidally stupid. You don’t persecute people who could crush you like a bug. 

Craig 13 March 2008 at 3am
By the way, that chart is wrong. It estimates that 50 million Catholics amounted to 24% of the US population in 2001. And it states that there were 71 million Catholics in teh US in 2004. There are over 300 million people in the United States. 50 million Catholics in 2001 was only 1/6 of the populion then, not 1/4. The 71 million in 2004, although a substantial increase from 50 million, doesn’t even amount to the 24% of Americans who the chart claimed were Catholic in 2001. Where did you get it? Whoever generated it seems to have some problems with basic math! The US is currently 22% Catholic (that’s a pretty well established number) but that chart is presenting data that is no good. The US is 22% Catholic and 66% Protestant, as of right about now. We will probably be increasingly Catholic in the future, but that isn’t a given – because Latin America is becoming increasingly Protestant, at the same time. 

Craig 13 March 2008 at 3am
God warrior I proved you wrong not bamban, catholics are the major cohesive homogenous christian group in the U.S. while protestants are many groups that don’t see eye to eye and far from united on most issues.
that Mike Huckabee is out of the running for President of the United States, because I think he’d have had some nice things in store for Jordan! Maybe even elevation to Axis of Evil status : He lost and is out.

He courted the religious right and lost the fair minded all American others even firebrand Rev. Hagee could not help. Amerivca has spoken that they want nothing to do with extremism and supermacists and judeo-christians. Now you got to listen Warrior now graduated to threatening soveriegn countries with annihilation because they decalred 40 trouble makers persona non grata. Are there smart bombs that kills only muslims or will christians be collateral damage too.

Missed the news , did the Pope denounce the Board of Christian Churches in Jordan??? did not hear he did. Think not. Don’t you trust the Pope to do the handling????Warrior.
Downed many drinks already or cooked some crack? Will not help to bury your head in the sand. Brown Obama is our next white house resident.

My bad should not be so hard on craigs they are already a nervous wrecks

A.Rehman 13 March 2008 at 3am
How dare you accuse an all American organization of publishing wrong data and from where you will get correct data then. Their data are acceptable to the government and planners and policymakers. If Craigs don’t approve then hard luck, one of a series of future things the craigs will not approve, …chuckle chuckle

A.Rehman 13 March 2008 at 3am
Churches and Church Membership in the United States, 1990 published by the Glenmary Research Center, P.O. Box 507, Mars Hill, NC 28754. Principle investigator: Church Growth Research Center, Church of the Nazarene, Kansas City, MO. This data source was obtained from the American Religion Data Archive

<hr /><a name="2004total"></a>* 2004 total population numbers were calculated by multiplying each group’s percent of the total adult 2001 population (207,882,353) by the 2004 total population (using the June 1, 2004 U.S. Census Bureau extrapolated estimate of 293,382,953 total Americans). The U.S. Census Bureau total U.S. population estimate for 2000, based on the actual 2000 Census, was: 281,421,906. The U.S. Census Bureau total U.S. population estimate for July 1, 2001 was: 293,655,404. The adult (ages 18 and over) population estimate for July 1, 2001 was: 220,377,406. The total adult population for 2001 used in the 2001 ARIS study (apparently counting only adults aged 21 and over) was: 207,882,353. For 2001 figures, see: 293655404http://www.census.gov/popest/states/asrh/SC-est2004-01.html. This method of extrapolating the 2004 total population of each religious group from the 2001 adult population of each group does not factor in differences in the average number of children per adult for each religious group

A.Rehman 13 March 2008 at 3am
http://www.adherents.com/
In majority American spirit of love and help I don’t mind helping even a warrior Craig

A.Rehman 13 March 2008 at 3am
God warrior I proved you wrong not bamban, catholics are the major cohesive homogenous christian group in the U.S. while protestants are many groups that
don’t see eye to eye and far from united on most issues.

The more you talk, the more you prove you don’t know anything. When it comes to warring people who persecute us, we’re all just protestants. I said before and I’ll say it again, you can ask the Pope what happens to people who persecute Protestants. Or, you can just do a Google search on Protestant Reformation. Or you can keep saying stupid stuff :)

Why would I care what the Pope says? The Pope is Catholic. He means nothing to me. You still don’t even know what Protstants are, do you? We warred Catholics into the ground during the middle ages. You know why? Because when we tried to correct errors in teh Catholic Church (like forgiving the sins of murderers, rapists and theives if they’d go on a Crusade) they accused us of heresy. When Catholics and Orthox Christians called Protestants illegitimate Christains, they were accusing us of heresy. Seriously bad idea.

As for your stats, the stats were wrong, buddy. Look at them. You ahev agood education, right? Or so you keep telling everyone! The flaws in that chart you copy pasted are pretty obvious. Did you edit it before pasting it? Because I ahve difficulty believing that a professional statistician would publish something with obvious math errors in it.

I’m not reading your latest attempt at providing data. It’s really quite pointless. All three of the current Presidential Candidates (Obama, Clinton and McCain) are Protestants. US Presidents are almost always Protestant. In fact, I believe ALL past US Presidents have been Protestant, except for John F. Kennedy, who was Roman Catholic. That isn’t a coincidence, is it? :P

By the way, the Clintons are Baptists. You should be very happy that they aren’t very religious. Shouldn’t you? Or do you REALLY believe that US Presidentsv and American people are above taking it personally when their co-relgionists get persecuted in a foreign country? Especially an ARAB MUSLIM country. In the middle of the war on terror. Genius plan, right?You want to persecute Christians, you better choose a sect that can’t persecute you back.

Craig 13 March 2008 at 8am
Al Jazeera seemed to have angered everyone on the face of the world with its different programmings.
I’m not against the program, but against it being hosted by Faisal Al Qasim who tries to provoke fights rather than intelligent discussions.

Hareega 13 March 2008 at 9am
TOLOLY HELP …. am sending my opticians bill to you …
There are over 300 million people in the United States. 50 million Catholics in 2001 was only 1/6 of the populion then
lol craig my frowzy son, you don’t even know the population of your own country, it hit 300 in 2007. some 6 years after the date you have given. the estimates give the population at around 280 million in 2001, and don’t tell me you gave a rough estimate by adding 20 million thats 7% of the population that u rough estimated.

your 88% of the population is christian is from 1990! sheesh talk about bad science. oh and by the way, jehova’s witness and the church of later day saints are included under christians.

Since you belong to the church of england and not a lutheran denomination, your church was established because Henry VIII was bored with his wife and wanted to divorce her, and protestants allow that. so don’t make it off like its an ideological struggle when its just a basic “what suites my needs” reason…

just because i care …. here is how it was run.
he American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) 2001 was based on a random digit-dialed telephone survey of 50,281 American residential households in the continental U.S.A (48 states). Respondents were asked to describe themselves in terms of religion with an open-ended question. Interviewers did not prompt or offer a suggested list of potential answers. The primary question of the interview was: What is your religion, if any? The religion of the spouse/partner was also asked. If the initial answer was ‘Protestant’ or ‘Christian’ further questions were asked to probe which particular denomination.

here it is if you care to challenge it, http://www.gc.cuny.edu/faculty/research_briefs/aris.pdf

if you can’t even digest basic numbers and fact of your own religion and country, how do you expect me not to be skeptical of you historical regurgitation

bambam 13 March 2008 at 10am
Craig

I went and asked and verified why the foreign christians were deported, and the reason is because they converted 17 muslim families and baptized them in jordan river. and those who were deported didn\’t belong to 1 sect or 2, they belonged to 46 different christian religious parties and sects that are under the umbrella of protestants who have intentions to tear our stability to pieces like that of Lebanon, yet protestants have remaining 23 religious sects allowed in Jordan and have been in the middle east since 1845 and the biggest example is the American Univesity of Beirut which was the American Protestant University and dropped protestant later on and the Bishop School in Amman which is also protestant! the number of sects under protestants parties is over 2500! when Protestants are being Deproted you become one, when my National Security Becomes under threat Christians and Muslims here become ONE! no wonder your president talks to god and your families are torn appart!! so yeah for a population of 200 thousand christian in jordan, we dont need you here! 23 protestant peaceful sects are more than enough!

Yet you have managed to assassinate the only decent president you ever had kennedy because he was Roman Catholic and he wanted to help the palestinians! and all your Great Presidents Have Used Vetos against Palestine 32 times to shield Israel from critical draft resolutions between 1972 and 1997 and you say your christians are NOT BRAINWASHED?!!!

Weird protestants are active in Lebanon, see how they are tearing themselves into pieces and dare you think that you will ever do that in Jordan! apparently 98% of the your converted Christians to protestants are Greek Orthodox here,, and hey dont be so sad, your people are still active here and are building four churches in madaba by CHRISTIAN CONVERTED JORDANIANS..

it makes me wonder, what does the States have yet on its agenda for the Middle East! all you want is divide people into more sects to remain in Control! Dream On Habiby! Dream On you mess with Jordan!

Tala 13 March 2008 at 12pm
Bambam,

lol craig my frowzy son, you don’t even know the population of your own country, it hit 300 in 2007. some 6 years after the date you have given. the estimates give the population at around 280 million in 2001, and don’t tell me you gave a rough estimate by adding 20 million thats 7% of the population that u rough estimated.

What “estimates”, dude? In any case, that “chart” is STILL wrong, because 50 million isn’t even close to 24% of 280 million. What’s your point? That data that whatsisface presented is a little bit less incorrect than I said it was? It’s still wrong, either way. And wrong by a lot. The figure presented for 2004 doesn’t even come up to the 24% of the US population claimed in 2001. Using their own numbers. I can’t believe any reputable statistician would attach his credentials to that thing when any layman can look at it and see that the numbers don’t work.

I’d still like to know who prepared that chart.

Jehovah’s witnesses and mormons account for less than 2% of the population combined. And I note YOUR survey is from 2001. You do know that America is MORE Christian (and more religious) now than it was in 2001, do you not? September 11th, 2001 had that effect on Americans.

And in any case, Bambam you said this:

thats not even anywhere close to 50% (your half) plus its not that different in the states either … its a slightly higher percentage but not close to half of the christians.

And whether we use your numbers, Ahriman’s numbers, or my numbers, what you said there was off by a mile. There are somewhere between 2 and 3 times more Protestants than Catholics in the United States. Do you admit to being wrong? This requires a yes or no answer. You’ve just proven YOURSELF wrong, and if you still won’t admit it, you are a hopeless case.

Since you belong to the church of england and not a lutheran denomination

Dude, “Lutheran” is it’s own denomination. There aren’t multiple versions of it. And it’s a very small denomination, these days. So, now you are going to play games claiming some Protestants are heretics and others aren’t? Screw that.

Craig 13 March 2008 at 2pm
Craig is now fomenting hate between Protestants and Catholics.
Craig says”"The Pope is Catholic. He means nothing to me. You still don’t even know what Protstants are, do you? We warred Catholics into the ground during the middle ages. You know why? Because when we tried to correct errors in teh Catholic Church (like forgiving the sins of murderers, rapists and theives if they’d go on a Crusade) they accused us of heresy. When Catholics and Orthox Christians called Protestants “illegitimate” Christains, they were accusing us of heresy. Seriously bad idea.As for your stats, the stats were wrong, buddy. Look at them.”"
Stats that disagree with Criag is wrong even if from the most respected institutes in America. Craig is the fifth column in America, Judas in America.
Add to the sheet -
Fomenting hatred even between christian sects in America, subversion .
Penality ? It is the electric chair with a very dry sponge.

A.Rehman 13 March 2008 at 2pm
Hi Tala,

I went and asked and verified why the foreign christians were deported, and the reason is because they converted 17 muslim families and baptized them in jordan river.

OK. That’s illegal in Jordan, right? It’s still a human rights violation on a basis of “Freedom of Religion”, but I’m sure that won’t be changing any time soon. Do you have a link for that info? Because I’ve heard they were deported in the dead of night, no reason given.

and those who were deported didn\’t belong to 1 sect or 2, they belonged to 46 different christian religious parties and sects that are under the umbrella of protestants who have intentions to tear our stability to pieces like that of Lebanon

This doesn’t make much sense. Why on earth would people of 46 different Protestant faiths be required to convert 17 families? Does that make sense to you?

yet protestants have remaining 23 religious sects allowed in Jordan and have been in the middle east since 1845 and the biggest example is the American Univesity of Beirut which was the American Protestant University and dropped protestant later on and the Bishop School in Amman which is also protestant!

I have heard that the Christians deported from Jordan were Baptists. Baptists are the largest denomination of Protestants, worldwide. They aren’t an obscure bunch. There are about 110 million baptists.

It makes sense that any religiously funded or founded institutions opened by Americans in the ME would be Protestant. We are a Protestant country, despite what some of these misinformed people are saying :)

when Protestants are being Deproted you become one, when my National Security Becomes under threat Christians and Muslims here become ONE!

That’s up to you. It seems to me that Jordanian Christians became “one” with Jordanian Muslims when they accused Protestants of being “illegitimate”. I wonder if Jordanian Muslims would do the same for you Jordanian Christians, if things get ugly there. Iraqi Muslims have been treating Iraqi Christians terribly, and we all know about the problems between Christians and Muslims in Lebanon. Hopefully, you will never have to find out.

no wonder your president talks to god and your families are torn appart!! so yeah for a population of 200 thousand christian in jordan, we dont need you here! 23 protestant peaceful sects are more than enough!

Then I suggest in the future you don’t allow Protestants INTO YOUR COUNTRY, rather than letting them in and then persecuting them.

Yet you have managed to assassinate the only decent president you ever had kennedy because he was Roman Catholic and he wanted to help the palestinians!

Well, that’s the first time I heard THAT theory! And I thought I heard thjem all! :P

and all your Great Presidents Have Used Vetos against Palestine 32 times to shield Israel from critical draft resolutions between 1972 and 1997 and you say your christians are NOT BRAINWASHED?!!!

Do you think Palestinian and other middle-eastern Christians are brainwashed? Do you think it is normal for Christians to have a higher opinion of Muslims than they do of other Christians? Because that seems pretty damn strange, to me. And do you think it is normal for Christians to ignore what is commanded in their own scripture, in favor of what is commanded in Islamic scripture? It seems to me that Jordanian Christians have reached an understanding with Jordanian Muslims, for the sake of their continued survival (and at the expense of their own religion!) and that you have come to believe that this is how it is for Christians everywhere. It simply isn’t. I believe most Palestinians are Catholic – you do know that Catholics are the most aggressive of all Christians with missionary work, right? It’s grossly unfair for Jordanian Catholics to be pretending it’s only Protestants who do that, or that it isn’t part of the Christian faith to spread the word.

Weird protestants are active in Lebanon, see how they are tearing themselves into pieces and dare you think that you will ever do that in Jordan!

Hmmm?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_Lebanon

The Maronite Church, a church in communion with the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest and politically most active and influential denomination of Lebanon’s Christians. The Greek Orthodox Church forms the second largest proportion of Lebanese Christians. The Armenian Apostolic Church also forms a large portion of the Christian population in Lebanon. Other branches of Christianity, including the Greek Melkite Catholic Church, an Eastern Catholic Church loyal to the Pope, are very common in Lebanon. The Latin Rite Roman Catholic Church, the Coptic Church, the Syriac Orthodox are also important Christian sects within Lebanon. These branches of Christianity are very influential in daily business and in the economy of Lebanon. In the Lebanese Parliament, the Christians hold 64 seats in tandem with 64 Muslim seats.

None of those “major” groups of Lebanese Christians is Protestant, Tala. The Moronites are Catholics and the Greek and Armenian Church are Eastern Rite Orthodox. Those are the three biggest denominations of Christians in Lebanon. I’m not aware of a single Lebanese Protestant who was involved in Lebanon’s civil war.

You know what the main difference between Christians in Lebanon and Christians in Jordan? Christians in Lebanon exist in large enough numbers that they can defend themselves. Christians in Jordan do not.

apparently 98% of the your converted Christians to protestants are Greek Orthodox here,, and hey dont be so sad, your people are still active here and are building four churches in madaba by CHRISTIAN CONVERTED JORDANIANS..

OK, good to know :)

it makes me wonder, what does the States have yet on its agenda for the Middle East! all you want is divide people into more sects to remain in Control! Dream On Habiby! Dream On you mess with Jordan!

You are blaming the US for Arab Protestants in Jordan? You think we sent them there? We didn’t. The US government doesn’t send missionaries anywhere, but we certainly aren’t sending Arabs from Arab countries to Jordan to do missionary work. You don’t really believe that, do you? But if you think that Jordan can persecute Protestants and there won’t be any repercussions from Protestant countries (like the US, and England) for that, you are wrong. That’s not a threat, it’s just common sense. We are fairly religious people over here, for the most part, and if things like this get publicized (it hasn’t been on the US news yet, that I’ve seen) a lot of Americans are going to be pretty upset. Did you notice how upset I got? Do you think politicians are any different?

Craig 13 March 2008 at 2pm
@craig of course…

I’d still like to know who prepared that chart.

It’s American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS), and i did say that above with a link … do read please or just press the link

You do know that America is MORE Christian (and more religious) now than it was in 2001, do you not? September 11th, 2001 had that effect on Americans.

thats entirely an opinion, while i do recognize that the religious are getting more extreme (case in point) i also recognize that the secularist and people who don’t identify with religion are increasing… so statement is shaky

Do you admit to being wrong? This requires a yes or no answer. You’ve just proven YOURSELF wrong, and if you still won’t admit it, you are a hopeless case.

NOPE not at all, using my numbers, which are the same as his numbers and adding up the protestants you get 38% a far cry from 50%. and your objection about the numbers, satistically speaking you can’t take religious belief of a person that is not an adult. so the population of the US in 2001 that is above 18 is about 200 million that gives u the 24.5% ur screaming about, i was just pointing out that even ur population numbers are screwed and thought i’ll save u the humiliation of not even realizing that basic point in statistics of religion… but you asked for it.

Dude, “Lutheran” is it’s own denomination. There aren’t multiple versions of it. And it’s a very small denomination, these days.

yes i know, am just correcting you that you are stating the history of the lutherans (the first protestants) not those of angelicals. and now i have to correct you again that it is not, its a major protestant denominations which is the majority in terms of chrisitians in no less that 20 countries with a lot of denominations from it that are lutheran so you are the one that is trying to say who is protestant on who is wrong, i remind you again the USA is not a representative sample of the world by any measure. you claim the mormons and JW are heretics to Christianity don’t you ? how is it any different ?

a bit about proselytizing
in protestant the practice of individual conversion, was adopted by the resurrection of pietism views in the protestant denominations. it wasn’t always there in that form. so don’t go generalizing that all Christian denominations think of it the same way you do… for instance eastern orthodox are against converting non-christians into christians and see it limited to converting over christians… i warned you not to turn this into a religious argument but you went ahead and look where you stand now.

and don’t include britian(i guess u meant england) into protestant countries, neither the goverment(secular) nor the people( over 60% don’t ascribe to a religion from multiple statistics) would appreciate an american saying that about them :D

ENJOY!

bambam 13 March 2008 at 4pm
FYI .. 46 sects banned from practice in Jordan include Mormons and Smiths, Protestant Extremists if i may add and this decision didn’t come from free space, it was a collective decision from Catholics, Roman Catholics, Latins, Greek Orthodox and Franciscans together to reduce the protestants from 70 to 23 Sect because of causing problems not because they are illegitimate faiths and i told you the consequences of converting muslims here in addition to Christians, the ones deported were no simple Baptists because Baptists are allowed in Jordan, there are 2 churches in my neighborhood and there is the baptist school too, so if you want to defend Protestants i think you need to Contact Protestant Church in Jordan and ask for the list of banned sects because Protestants have been living here, there are protestants in my family before i was born!

all im telling you, Prostestants from its begining from Luther and Henry to its various sub divisions is a political faith and its my opinion! a faith that wants to stretch to fit, so its sub divides and multiplies within itself to meet a demand, and when religion becomes political, it becomes human manipulative and a mean of control of people, we dont need poeple to tailor religion to their political desires, maybe part of you corrected Rome and Catholics but from what i see, it became a mess and extreme, a relative became a pentacostal and in no time he started saying that jews have the right for all Palestine, hating muslims and now he is sent on missions to China and the Gulf, why?? another became baptist and claims to speak tongues and became super sensitive to Eastern Church, do you think we are in times where we need missionaries and closing our minds to our faiths? a faith is something personal, its beautiful when its genuine, im not saying that all protestants are bad but some are, and some are very dangerous and i told you before we wont take any risks on security not with sects coming with big money here and Christians in Jordan have nothing to do with Politics, we are a minority and we have enough diversity, try to understand what outweights what if your aim is peace, dedicating funds for converting people and targeting the poor and changing people\’s faith and ending up with dead people is not right! in a muslim eye, he doesn\’t differentiate an eastern Church from Protestants or mormons or smiths or anything, its simply Christian, we have come a long way and living peacefully and we dont need a civil war if we give you a chance here, not in a country that already respects us and gives us our rights, we are still growing, anything a Christian need we would contact the Royal Court and they will listen to us, we dont need Chaos, Muslims need time to focus on reflecting their religion to give a chance for understanding to the world, converting leads to killing so not until religions understand each other till you ask from people to change.

my last note, if you were to practice true Christian you would not use the language you used with BamBam and A.Rehman and you should understand what i mean. our acts speaks for our religion, this is how we spread the word as Christians here, this is how we were taught to show the world we are Christians in the Eastern Church by being outstanding in our work and peaceful, i kept asking myself, why would you want to convert a Christian as you spoke in your previous comment, am i not a Christian already, are we not reading the same Bible ??

another note on commenting, A.Rehman is A.Rehman and not Ahriiman! i think any american would be offended if his name was mispelled and its written infront of you. so yeah these basic simple things matter.

about my source of information, i went and spoke to the head of the Latin Church. he was closely informed about the issue.

Tala 13 March 2008 at 4pm
Terrorists and bigots and extremists and fanatics the world over love Craig, they identify with him and he with them.
Craig says kill, annihilate, deport and destroy in the name of American majority protestants whom he says he represents. Now while I and others disputed what he says with facts and figures he does not seem to agree nor heed, we say that the Craig America Craig describes does not exist even if he wishes that because Americans me included are majority sane people who are tolerant and broad minded and decent folks. Well ,he insists on his skewed opinions of America and Protestants . So Craigs America is a country out to annihilate other nations and races based on colour, race and religion and impose Craigs version of a new world order that preach no tolerance and no compassion and no love for others who the Craigs see as not Christian or not Christian enough or not extemist protestants enough. Following that logic then Americans and Craigs version of Christian protestants as they are painted by him should be declared terrorists because this is how we define terrorists now- Groups out to kill and destroy in the name of religion or ideology anybody that does not subscribe to same beliefs and ideology. Craig even gives hisorical precedents of how protestants annihilated ,or at least tried to, the Catholics in Europe, he actually is gloating even after more than 500 years have passed since and every sane person call those times the dark ages.
I don’t agree with Craigs version as may be more than 90% of Americans don’t agree with this version. And that is why the Craigs are losing numbers and losing seats and favour in America, because should they succeed in targeting others now their next target is the Americans themselves.

A.Rehman 13 March 2008 at 6pm
Rev. Hagee, the extremist evangelical preacher called on Israel not to cede a grain of sand to the Palestinians and called on America to put all it’s might behind Israel, he says supporting Israel in usurping Palestinians and Arab land is God order and whoever does not support Israel and the choosen people is rejecting God. ( like American Gov. needs encouragement), He says The Messiah will not come till Israel becomes the mightiest of nations. When asked how he reconcile his belief in Christianity and in Jesus Christ with the Jewish faith open rejection of Christ as the coming Messiah since Jewish don’t believe in Christ, he says tounge -in-cheek that (more or less) that he is counting on the Messiah to convince the Jews to follow him. Of course his last statement is to appease his congregation so they keep writing the cheques.

A.Rehman 13 March 2008 at 9pm
Craig, listen to me, as a person i can’t judge your faith, i am not even entitled to do that, and i would hate myself to go against others beliefs demanding their deportation because they are different from mine, this is not freedom, but i want to experience my nations freedom to decide for itself before accepting new thoughts, the simple basic rights of freedom before commiting a complete ideological shift, no society changes ubruptly. i told you in the first place im against it, there are Protestants whom i care for here and my closest friends are Muslims as well, just like you, maybe i lived my life around muslims in an Eastern Church and i have experienced war closely like you lived in a Protestant Church around Jews, i am Arab thus i understand Muslim religion and i have an obligation towards Jordan like yours towards America, but im trying to bridge my points to tell you there are parts you dont see as much as you are saying there are parts i dont see as well, i appologise if my pitch was high at any point, i don’t deny the black history of the Eastern Church, but i cant ignore the origins of Protestants and say that all Protestants are all good and Americans are flawless and their policies are all of good conduct and that religion is not influencial in America, nor that Muslims are being all straigth in their struggle and terror free (though i sincerly hate the word terror) and you see from the arab blogs, everyone is criticising wrong practices and trying to reform, same for your people, trust us, we can do that, we want to reach a better status and we want a better life, if we examine ourselves as humans we all have the same needs and freedoms and demands and we are alike, differences are minor, so if we speak to the good in people, this is the part that will respond back. all i am asking you to do is to examine where your country’s policies have been directed and whether you truly understand Islam and the Culture and the reason behind blind alliance with Israel, and on the other hand, i promise i will do what i can to raise the bar on human rights and help the Arab/Islamic/Christian Middle Eastern Culture mature to better practices that is in favour of Justice. what you say?

Tala 13 March 2008 at 9pm
Tala, thank you for trying to pacify Craig and make him see reason and act with civility but my advice don’t waste your breath and in this case fingers strokes. You are not living in America so may be you don’t know the type yet. Xenophopic fascists beyond redemption ,disagree with them and they resort to abuse and filthy language and violence. He did not slander you yet at least not like he did me and Bamban. Some americans psyche have been damaged by a president who espouces violence and rhetoric and does not shirk from using America’s might to subdue others always using 9/11 or protecting american lives and way of life as a pretext to bulldozer critics.

A.Rehman 13 March 2008 at 10pm
The free Americans. Long but worth reading.
Stagflation/Hyperinflation or
Just The End of Your Way of Life?Craig Harris
Mar 14, 2008

[Craig, we truly appreciate your taking time to give us your highly-respected and valuable insights to share with our 321gold readers]

I haven’t written anything for public consumption in a while, because I’ve been busy living in what I like to call, "the real world" and making my living by trading my own money. That’s what I do these days. I’m a fly on the wall with electronic access to the dens of thieves.If I come out on top then I transfer those digits for things I need.Yes I’m still long gold from $290, and crude from $60 but whatever, I’ve been doing ok. I’ve been doing ok that is, if the money I have was worth what it used to be, but it isn’t. So rather than just slap a label on what it is when words have already arguably lost their meaning, let’s discuss it.I am personally more concerned about quality of life issues than I am about money given the current circumstances.The last time when I wrote publicly, I was talking about the decline of the empire and the end of the pre eminence of the US dollar…war, that sort of thing.So that’s what’s going on now, what I was talking about then.The US is currently in what I like to call a period of "decay". It is in a period of decay in every possible way. If you live in the real world like I do, it is evident. If you consume a diet of the corporate media cheerleading squad, then you don’t live in the real world and it could be difficult for us to communicate during the rest of this essay. We’ve got people charged with cleaning up the corrupt broken system going out with an $80,000 hooker bill and being replaced by a blind man. The current El Presidente is a wind-up doll for a bunch that should all be in orange jumpsuits. It would be comical if it weren’t so sad to watch it all go down. It is a modern day tragedy being played out in real time in the context of a giant government/corporate media theatre production.It’s amazing to me how people who are into politics or religion or whatever will violently oppose some opinions, when people simply report the facts they see around them. Anyway, again… another subject. Politics and religion are both the same thing. They are both simply effective methods to control large masses of people. I just figured that one out not too long ago when I was into my learning the history of the world project. It has always been that way and always will be.So anyway, that’s all I do to make my living. I assimilate the facts I see around me and invest accordingly. I keep a diary of what I think and why, and I even publish it. If I’m right I make money and if I’m wrong I lose money. I like it that way. It keeps me honest.That’s one reason I don’t write a lot publicly these days. It is becoming increasingly difficult for people who live in the real world to communicate with those who don’t, and there is an increasing number of those who don’t just simply because most people believe what they are told and the lies they are being told are now monumental. Astronomical in size. That’s one of those universal rules about human beings; the majority will always go along with whatever you tell them. That’s just the way it always has been and always will be. All good propagandists know that.For those who do think for themselves and live in the real world however, everything that is happening today has been entirely predictable and even expected. I mean, the corporate media will say "no one ever saw this" or "they never saw that" and really the case is they just choose not to have those people appear. That’s a whole subject in itself however.I was noting to my subscribers the other evening that if you take a look at a picture of a pump price for gas from ten years ago until now, that’s around an 18% increase annualized every year for ten years. All the other prices in the real world have risen at commensurate levels like healthcare and all the big items people like me in the real world need to spend money on.Furthermore, if you plot energy in the last five years, the numbers are bigger. If you plot the last two the numbers are bigger yet. The last one, bigger yet. So what we have here in the real world are prices accelerating at an ever-increasing double-digit rate. Call that what you want. We have real wages basically constant and good jobs are harder to come by. We have a middle class that is going away. We have the majority of the citizens having their wealth, if they still have any, confiscated due to the ravages of inflation, or with toxic financial contact with the healthcare/pharma, legal or government money machines. So in the "not real world" big brother and his corporate media outlets wants you to believe that there really hasn’t been much inflation or any significant changes to the status quoand that lie is so big that you may even believe it.So if you do, then you don’t live in the real world and we cannot communicate effectively because what you think you know is the product of a corporate boardroom. What I know is the product of living.The other big thing that has happened since I last wrote is that the guys on Wall Street figured out how to loan a bunch of money to people that had no ability or even real desire to repay that money except for the fact that house prices were sure to go ever higher which is the definition of a mania. So working through a little bit of that math, with an estimated 30% of homeowners currently upside down on their mortgages, that works out to around ten trillion dollars of real estate still to be walked away from according to simple math and a few basic assumptions I worked out the other night.In the "not real world" they have told you from the outset that first there was no real estate bubble, then that there might have been one, then that it would be over quickly and now they aren’t sure when it will be over and the PR firms are busy working on what to tell you next.It’s not going to be over any time soon. The big question in my mind is whether the whole thing is about to go kaput or if we are just going to witness a continuous decay as the wealth shifts into a very small percentage of the population… as the middle class flames out. Again, that is a subject in itself. That is the subject of the Straussian nightmare; a change in the form of government that is pitched as the same thing as the old government.So on top of this Wall Street genius of loaning money to people who could not pay, you have the cure for all this mess being printing more money (creating more debt). So they’re going to fix a problem of too much debt by creating more debt. Perfect. They’re even monetizing it by taking nearly worthless debt for brand new money created with the push of a button and an organized media campaign to tell you what they did and why it was good and why it was not monetization or covert nationalization of the banking system. It is what it is, call it what you want.So the idea is that by pushing buttons you can cure these ills, but the reality is that big pile of new money is diluting the old money and sending the US dollar into the toilet. I mean, they’re pitching it as all good, and what’s left of the free markets are in sharp disagreement with the party line.Now; the only reason the USA has gotten away with the idea that this balance sheet was compatible with the idea of being the world’s reserve currency was that the USA was the global kingpin, the Mac daddy… until the empire did what all empires do and that’s get too big for their britches.Then they always start going off expanding the empire into places that are too expensive to maintain, imposing their will on people who don’t want their will imposed on, and then that all gets so expensive and they start making so many enemies they start going bankrupt. That’s what always happens. It always does. That’s probably another one of those human nature things.So in the real world right now, we have a situation where the banks are bankrupt, the government is bankrupt, the people are bankrupt, and the cure for this is to lower interest rates and create more
money (debt) by pushing a button… diluting the value of the money further and causing everything we have going on now. It all makes sense here in the real world. All the pieces to the puzzle fit and none don’t.So is this stagflation or is this hyperinflation? Well, I’m not carrying a wheelbarrow around with my money in it yet, but I do know the prices and costs of everything I need to live are going up at an ever-increasing rate.
The shape of that curve is a polynomial consistent with ever accelerating inflation which some would call hyperinflation. I know that if I earn a 20% return, then I might be keeping up with the increase in the costs of everything I need to maintain my personal status quo. If you can balance a checkbook and multiply, then you know. If you are one of the ones who believe everything you’re told, then you have to not believe your lying eyes or not be able to balance a checkbook.When the cure for all problems can only be to lower interest rates and dilute the supply of the money by creating more money, then that is a vicious cycle consistent with acceleration or hyperinflation.I really don’t like it when people casually compare what is going on right now to 1929, because in 1929 the cure was basically to spend less and now the cure is basically to spend more. Even worse, being the geniuses we are, we figured out a way to amplify spending, called derivatives. They’re based on the real thing but amplifiedlike 100 times. So we’ve already been doing the "cure" for so long that maybe the patient is no longer responding?So what we are currently seeing, in both gold and crude oil is a loss of confidence. It’s a loss of confidence that this whole thing makes any sense.It’s a loss of confidence in the absurd idea that you can create wealth by pushing a button. Since this whole thing now relies solely on confidence and not any intrinsic value, commodities, especially gold and crude oil, are acting as alternative wealth storage devices to paper currency.If you have a bushel of corn, then you know what that is. You can eat it, or do a bunch of other stuff with it. With a piece of paper with a picture and official looking numbers on it, well you aren’t as sure as you were yesterday what you can do with that. There will be no run on the banks this time around, because the banks can always be refilled with ever more worthless money. Instead of a run on the banks, there will be a run on the dollar. A run on the dollar (or run into commodities) is the modern equivalent to a run on the banks back then, for the reasons I’ll get into shortly.So there is a loss of confidence roughly equal to people’s confidence in the government and the banking system. This decreased confidence is fueled by the fact that they are creating too much money. The idea with fiat money is that you only grow the amount of it as the total output of the economy increases otherwise you are diluting it. The thought experiment for that goes like this. You have one giant pile of stuff, and one giant pile of money. Right now there is enough money so that one-dollar gets one pound of stuff. Now, if you double the amount of that money, then it takes two dollars to equal one pound of that stuff. Unless the pound of stuff doubles in size, you have just caused 100% price inflation. So, operations like just zapping a half a trillion or so into existence out of thin air means just a bigger pile of money going after the same amount of stuff. So that’s what we have going on now. These are financial engineering acts of desperation to save a system by giving it more of what got it to this point in the first place… debt. So when regular people like me think about that, they think, that doesn’t make any sense, and they lose confidence.That’s in the real world. On TV things are still good though. So if you don’t like what you’re reading here, then go turn on the TV. You’ll feel better.I hate to simplify things too much, but this is the reason Mr. Greenspan called gold the conscience of the central bankers back in the 60’s before he lost his mind or whatever happened. Maybe he couldn’t resist the power of the ring or something… I don’t know. Anyway, it’s their conscience because they can’t just zap gold into existence with the stroke of a pen.Guess what? They can zap money into existence now. Poof – you’ve got money.Any amount you want. That’s why this is fundamentally different from the great depression. This time, they can just increase the giant pile of money. they can just drop it out of helicopters if they have to. They even said so… and it isn’t going to buy as much stuff. It doesn’t already.So you still have the same basic problem from a human standpoint. That’s the really interesting thing. In other words, whether you have a deflation like in the 30’s or an inflation like now, the people suffer similar effects. It’s hard to find a job, you can’t make ends meet, city and government functions and services are understaffed and underfunded, and you are hungry. They are both a state of decay. Both usually end in war too.The last one did. This one is different however in a lot of ways… and it’s much more serious. It is fundamentally different because it is the end of the world’s first experiment in government by the people and it has been replaced by something new.So if you’re into labels, then maybe you can find a label for what to call this. I like to quote Lenin on that:
"Fascism is capitalism in decay." -Vladimir Lenin
So I really don’t want to get into all that implies in a short essay, but I will condense it all and say the US is in a state of decay. Political, socioeconomic, leadership, influence, status, any label you can think of.The US is losing power and influence in the world, and it only has 5% of the world’s populationand they’re all bankrupt. I like to think of it like a continuum from the US coming out on top after WWII to a banana republic run by El Presidente. That’s what I call them now, whoever he or she is, El Presidente because that’s what they are. A corporate spokesman who is put there, bought and paid for by Acme corp.The country has lost its way and is increasingly operating at the whim of the corporate lobbyists and special interests that own the politicians as the stench of it all starts to smell so foul that even the corporate media disinformation campaign can’t convince your lying eyes. It is not what it appears to be. It is Rome circa 400’s. It has already bankrupted itself policing an unsustainably large global empire. You have to live through the decline.So that all gets into people living in the real world versus those who are not. Again, it’s safe to say that the world is voting with its dollars… and the 5% of the world’s population are going down hard on 95% leverage. They aren’t going to like it either.Tune in next time to hear which states secede first.Mar 14, 2008
Craig Harris
email: bcharris@gate.net

A.Rehman 15 March 2008 at 7pm

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