Reflections From a Murky Pond

It’s things like this video that may explain the existence of Islamaphobics like the Netherlands’ MP Geert Wilder. The words of the British Imam, Anjem Choudary during a recent interview on BBC’s Hard Talk certainly lends a certain creditability to Wilder’s views of Islam.

Listening to Mr. Choudary’s statements defending the terrorist bombing of the London Public Transport System on July 7, 2005, which killed 52 people and injured 700 others, is enough to incite rage and fear in most people.

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FYI,

Reflections From A Murky Pond has been upgraded to use the WordPress 2.5 codebase. This was actually done on Sunday, March 30, 2008, but is just being announce today after some testing on my part.

Thank you.

Below is the English version of Geert Wilders’ highly controversial film about the Qu’ran. It directly links passages from the Qu’ran to various and sundry heinous acts of savagery, brutality, oppression, and terrorism that have been committed by Islamists in the name of Islam across the globe.

I’m posting it here, not as an attack on Muslims or the religion of Islam, but as a starting point for discussion.

My first thought on this video was that it is a classic example of “cherry picking” individual passages out of a text in order to use those passages out of context to change people’s overall opinion of a text as a whole. This tactic has been used time and time again, yet never seems to fall out favor through overuse.

The English translations of the referenced sura from the Qu’ran are linked to below in their entirety. Read as part of each whole passage they convey a somewhat different meaning.

• Sura 4
• Sura 6
• Sura 8
• Sura 47

My second and sadder thought was that the extremists – a small minority among Muslims, as it is with any religion or ideology – are probably doing the exact same sort of “cherry picking”, down to sura and verse in order to justify their own agendas.

I think that Wilder’s video will appeal to many people who are already afraid of Muslims. I also think it will enrage many Muslims who already hate the West. I doubt this level of bigotry will change anyone’s opinion though; it’s too unsubtle to be good propaganda. I am force to conclude that Geert Wilder is hoping for a violent reaction from Muslims since such would only further support his world view.

On Monday, March 24, 2008, at the altar of Hestia in Olympia, Greece, the Olympic Torch was lit – amid peaceful protests – for the 2008 Beijing Games. Eleven women, representing the roles of priestesses, performed the ceremony in which the torch is kindled by the light of the Sun, its rays concentrated by a parabolic mirror.

The Olympic Flame will now be carried by runners during a 85,000-mile, 136-day relay across five continents and 20 countries, ultimately culminating with its descent into Hell as it is plunged into the Cauldron during the Opening Ceremony of the Beijing Games. To add insult to decades of injury, the Olympic Torch will be carried through Tibet to further show Chinese control of the occupied territory.

So, after decades of being a beacon of hope for mankind, the Olympic Torch returns to the darkness as it is used once again for the glorification of a totalitarian and genocidal regime. It should now be remembered that the modern torch relay was introduced by Carl Diem, president of the Organization Committee for the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, as part of an effort to turn the games into a glorification of the Third Reich.

I’m fairly sure that everyone in the US who’s not deaf has heard a lot about Trinity UCC’s retiring senior Pastor, Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr.’s radically anti-American and racist speeches and diatribes. You’d have to work diligently and relentlessly to maintain any semblance of ignorance on the subject.

Few people in America are now indifferent to Wright.

It’s no surprise that Wright’s ongoing hatred of “White America” has had a negative impact on Sen. Barack Obama’s bid for the Democratic Party’s US presidential nomination. I had even posted about this back in July, 2007. In an attempt to mitigate the damage to his campaign Sen. Obama has publicly condemned Wright’s bigotry and distanced himself from his former pastor.

Obama has gone a step further though…

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