GrapeApe

Heard this on ABC News last night and found it to be morbidly humorous - The Tourism Minister (Ok, that is pretty funny in and of itself) of Aghanistan, Abdul Rahman, was beaten to death at the Kabul Airport when a rumor was started that he had cancelled a flight to Mecca. A crowd of devout and faithful Muslims stormed the aircraft, beat him to death, and tossed his body onto the Tarmac. Guess that shows what a peace loving religion Islam is AND what a novel solution for the frequent delays faced on airlines!

Marco

Boy, if Afganistans methods were used in Italy, I think half of the country population would be murdered...<BR><BR>Nevertheless, GrapeApe, I hate PC, but I think you are a bit fast in generalising: Nazi germans were pure white arian cristians, do the genocides they are responsible for show what a peace loving religion is cristianity?<BR><BR>Same things can be said about crusades, witches trials, spanish inquisition, kkk, etc...<BR>

newshound

OK-it was the Afghan Aviation Minister and they were pilgrims going to Mecca and a soccer match..The mob stormed the plane..I think this is another one for the books under Soccer Hooligans

xxxx

The reason, I heard, was that they waited in the cold for two days for the plane. Two women actually died while waiting. Talk about a slight inconvenience.

Matt

Nobody should generalize or stereotype any catagory of people. There are over 6 billion people living on this planet these days and every one is different. I will say this however, everyone living on the planet right now does have a sin nature, therefore you are no better or worse than anyone else. Love your neighbor.

MJ

I agree with you Marco and Matt BUT if we all would be more self-reflective and honest and less arrogant about our religions and/or beliefs I think the world would be a better place. What bothers a lot of people about some visible and very vocal Moslems is how arrogant they are. So "goody-2-shoes" and self-righteous and yet apparently as murderous as everyone else for their "cause". In fact, they seem more so. So many of them seem to be out of their minds with hatred and violence. They fool no one at least not anyone using even a small portion of the brain mass. <BR><BR>As for the two women who died waiting for the plane: Many Moslems want to die in Mecca--like Hindus to Varenesi--they often wait til they are on their last legs to go. No disrespect for them intended. <BR>

yyy

I can see your sense of morbidly humorous in the concept that Aghanistan even has a Tourism Minister, but overall this news story infuriated me. We as USA taxpayers are spending & have spent millions on feeding them. Why are these MEN going on any type of trip when they can not feed their own? Since that is their priority, then we USA taxpayers should let allow nature to take its course.

me

yyy, I can see your point - but doing the Hajj once in a lifetime is a duty to every good Muslim who can find a way to do it, much in the way that Europeans several hundred years ago were compelled by their faith to make pilgrimages to certain holy Christian sites.<BR><BR>Just heard on Radio $ that Karzai has made a statement that this miniter's death was actually a political assassination, and has taken several government officials into custody.

me

Sorry, make that Radio 4

Marco

Dear yyy, it is a pitty that the only perception certain people have on what's going on around the world is related only to their taxpayment roll. I'd like to remember you that the reason why you're paying taxes for Afghanistan is primely to possibly avoid any other 09/11... There are many other places in the world where people are starving and cannot feed themselves, however don't worry: in those other places America as well as Europe are defenitly allowing nature to take its course...<BR>I hate PC, and I don't think that the reason why some nation are weak must automaticly be blame on those nation who are strong, nor do I think rich nations should always come to help and pay everything for all the poors all over the world, but PLEASE, let's not be hypocritical!

top

toping

historian

Marco,<BR><BR>If you study your history and the recently released documents of Nazi Germany, you will find that their intention was to annihilate the Christians as soon as they were done with the Jews.

observer

Gee MJ - the same could be applied to Christians: arrogant ( OUR religion is the right one and the rest of you are going to burn in hell ) self rightous and so "goody-2-shoes". And Christians don't go around killing each other - yeah right.

Capo

I realize that Ayatollah Khomeini was a medieval-thinking cranky old man, and I realize that the vast majority of Muslims in the world are peaceful people...but, on the other hand, I'm not aware of non-Islamic holy man who has called for the death of an author who wrote a book that was alleged to have been "blasphemous."<BR><BR>I'm also not aware of (though there may be one or more) any non-Muslim country which forbids the public practice of other religions, which fundamentalist Saudi Arabia does. <BR><BR>It makes me very grateful to live in the U.S., where people are free not only to publicly practice whatever religion they choose, but are also free to criticize religious leaders, and religion itself.

Marco

Historian, you may be right, my example on nazis wasn't really correct, in fact the nazis never really based their ideology on cristianism, but my point was that as nazis are not represantative (or at least only partially representative) of what is and has been European civilisation, nor talebans, Al Quaed terrorists, or what happened with the Afghan minister are trully representative of Islam culture.

Capo

Marco, as I said elsewhere, while the vast majority of Muslims are undoubtedly peace-loving people, I never hear about Christians, Jews, Mormons, Hindus, Buddhists, Taoists or people of other non-Islamic religions citing scripture about "killing unbelievers/infidels." <BR><BR>Is it unreasonable to at least ask what might there be in Islam/the Qur'an that breeds such attitudes, no matter how small a minority of Muslims may hold them? <BR>____________________<BR><BR>As for the Nazis, although (to the best of my knowledge) they certainly didn't use the Bible, or the words of Jesus, to justify what they did, I do have to wonder how much religious-based anti-Semitism (which was certainly not unheard of among Christians who blamed Jews for killing Jesus) may have played a part in their repulsive attitudes toward the Jewish people.

Marco

Capo, your question is more than reasonable, and you are right, there is a strong minority of muslims who not only are fanatics but they also preach violence against the infidels.<BR><BR>Unfortunatly, muslim Coran, as well as Cristian or Jewish bible can lead to different interpratations.<BR><BR>It happened to cristianity in the past, to have some fanatical, violent and racist minorities that had an interpratation of the bible of their own. Luckily, cristian civilisation made great evolutions to the point where those minorities couldn't find their places any more.<BR><BR>There was a time when Islam civilisation was more tollerant than the European one. A lot of ancient Greek and Roman authors are known to us thanks to the arabs who saved and traduced their works when they were occupying Sicily and Spain, while in the rest of medieval cristian Europe those books were being burned because the church considered the authors pagans.<BR><BR>Why Islam seems to have fallen today in some medieval dark age could open a very big debate, but it is a very interesting and important question which answer would help in the fight against terrorism

MJ

Observer; Go back and read my post again. You may be an observer but apparently you are not a comprehender.<BR><BR>And by way observer, I'm not a christian.

Florence

Before this thread is erased for obvious reasons ...<BR><BR>yyy, I thought American (and others) taxpayers were giving money to Afghanistan in order to fight terrorism and protect freedom. Travelling in order to fulfill one's perceived religious obligation is a freedom ... there's more to feeding people than just giving them bread.<BR><BR>Capo, Jews (some of them), Hindus (especially these last few years against Moslem and Christians, and buddists in Sri-Lanka), Buddhists (against taoists, hindus in Sri-Lanka, other buddist sects, and christians), Christians (against "pagans" all over the world in the colonies, not to mention some contemporary loonies like in the USA or in Northern Ireland) have advocated, and in some case are still advocating, the physical suppression of other religions. History of religions is a long list of atrocities ...