It's the Religion of Peace, you know.

I'll bet that's what they were saying of Christianity, about the time of the Crusades and the various inquisitions.

It's like an epidemic of insanity. I don't get it.

Chantal

Indeed. However, like the Muslim who commented below, it just gets embarrassing to keep having to insist you're the Religion of Peace when your fellow religionists are causing so much suffering in the name of said religion.

I'd consider myself someone who is perfectly capable of thinking of cruel, sick and twisted things (after all, it helps with writing villains!). So the first thing I thought of when you said they piled into the van was, "Oh, the driver was recruiting suicide bombers", which is bad enough.

But to blow them up after giving them hope? That's beyond sick. When I was younger, things like this made me ashamed to be a Muslim. Now it just makes me angry that my religion is being dragged through the gutters.

And that's a shame, because there is nothing at all bad about being a Muslim. If you read the Koran or listen to the music of Sami Yusuf, you can see that it's a beautiful religion.

There have been plenty of Christian extremists in the past, too--look at the Spanish Inquisition, the Crusades, and some of the Tudor rulers' ways of handling people who didn't toe the line. They may not have done much suicide bombing, but they were every bit as evil.

I might be wrong, but I think a lot of it has to do with who's in power. When you have a person in power like Saddam Hussein or Kim Jong-Il, or Adolf Hitler, the person in charge influences everyone below him, especially if the person in charge allows and encourages his people to do criminal things.

I don't think Salah a-din would have allowed his people to do these sorts of things, for example.

I guess what I find the hardest to understand is, why are these people killing fellow Muslims? I could understand it better if they were just killing US troops, but they're attacking their own people--for no good reason that I can figure out.

I know about Suni and Shia--But finding out that Shiites are killing other Shiites so they can create hatred against the Suni...It's beyond belief.

Bottom line--the religion's not at all crazy. Some of the people are.

Chantal

*dies laughing at the 'recruiting suicide bombers' idea!

Hm. Just how evil could you make the Brethren?

Seth thinks he doesn't want to find out. (g)

Chantal