I don't want Turkey in the EU either, but not because they're Muslim. That's Ben's argument.

He also draws a parallel between atheism and totalitarianism, which is rather popular among both Muslims and Christians. Meh. That one is no better than Islam and terrorism.

To be honest, I cant see anything here that should infuriate Muslims. An unfortunate choice of quote, maybe, but thats all.
The fact is, Benny has a perfect right to his opinion. It doesnt have to be the PR-friendly pablum that Western leaders pass out about the " religion of peace" these days.

Whether you think it should or should not offend is effectively irrelevant, in light of the current fuss.

As for Benny having a right to his opinion, certainly. However, public figures know full well that offhand remarks can have a variety of negative consequences (as in negative with respect to their interests and goals), which is why they have press people who do talking points and control messaging.

Aside from all the other issues with Pope Palpatine's remarks - and there are too many to rehash in a short comment here - I noticed that one of his tropes was that a religion spread by the sword - both the ideology of it and in practice - is incompatible with reason/logos/etc. At least historically, isn't that just a little bit rich coming from the head of the Catholic Church?

Unintentionally hilarious, I'd say. They were killing heretics in Europe right up until the Spanish Civil War, which for the Francoist side was practically a replay of the expelling of the Moslems from Iberia. Sheesh.

At the very least, Benedict should realize that as Pope, he's still (effectively) the tribal leader of a pretty big group of Christians who live in countries where such an affiliation is a real issue. And he ought damn well to know that even a quote that (in a careful line-by-line reading of his speech) he doesn't fully endorse will be read otherwise. So he either deliberately or with a complete lack of proper perspicacity endangered a number of his followers, all so he could show what a well-read follower of other people's arguments he was (gosh, he quotes 15th-century Byzantine emperors!). Basically, he was wanking.

Which activity I think Catholic dogma has something to say about.

Exactly what I was thinking, Tom. A couple of churches got firebombed in Nablus today. Obviously now is a bad time for a major Xtian representative be wanking on about Islam in a clumsy fashion.

Of course, it's also annoying to see the wild-eyed neo-Salafis shrieking and burning things at the drop of a hat.

(btw the Palpatine reference is gold, haha)

Of course the Pope of the Papists has a perfect right to his opinion, and indeed to say it.

That of course doesn't make the remarks either intelligent, fit for the office or the reaction on the Muslim side invalid. Indeed, by this same logic, it is perfectly valid.

BTW, I heartily endorse this Brad DeLong sermon on whether exclusive & frankly bigoted theologies are somehow more "authentic" than, eg. Unitarian Universalism.

mmm, religion and politics, guaranteed to break the ice at parties.

I think Universalists have misunderstood religion. Where it actually matters and is influential, it is exclusive and bigoted. Look to Poland, Iraq, or the Bible belt. That's how it works in real life. The unreality of any religion must necessarily challenge or be challenged by other unrealities, or by reality itself.

Right. Try India in the '40s. Or South Africa in the 80s. Or the American South in the '50s and '60s. Where religion matters & is influential is where it is deeply felt and connects with people's daily lives. This is orthoganal to bigotry & exclusivism.

India? As an example of religiously encouraged tolerance? que?

Fellow named Gandhi, you might have heard of him. Admittedly a more problematic example than the others.

The sermon is an example of cherry-picking. It's easy to find Bible (or Quran, or Torad) quotes for tolerance, but it's just as easy to find quotes that justify intolerance. If scripture is an authority, then it must be so in its entirety. One cannot then simply discard the passages one does not like. Otherwise it is simply an inspiration, or an argument, but not one having any more authority than Aragorn of the Dunedain. Yet, why then constantly refer to the Holy Book, why single it out? The self-contradiction is obvious.

Of course you can pick and choose; everyone has, including the fundamentalists, throughout history. (They claim they haven't, but they lie, and no one but fundies and atheists believe them). (Sigh, please delete the double-post, E - can't spell "cat").

Oh, by the way, in case it wasn't perfectly obvious, brother cattle prod is me.

But if religion is an empty vessel that can be filled with whatever quotations one picks from diverse and self-contradicting holy scripture, it follows the bigoted and hateful are no less authentic than the tolerant universalists. As long as one can find a quote or two. Yes?

"...it follows the bigoted and hateful are no less authentic than the tolerant universalists. As long as one can find a quote or two. Yes?"

Yes.

I believe that the corner you are trying to cleverly back me into was in fact my initial position, so, yes, in the sense of "authentic" that means "authentically felt by the believer" or "true to the nature of religion, whatever the hell that is". In the sense of "representative of the religion in question", the answer is "not necessarily, and gee it would be helpful if only there were two thousand years of intellectual history to draw upon instead of trying to work this all out ex nihilo".

There are, in fact, passages of the Bible that have been accorded much more weight throughout history than other passages. The Sermon on the Mount is preached (if not practiced) a great deal more than the story of Moses and the Amalekites.

Also, I was totally pwned by matthew.

true dat. In any event (as was previously discussed here, I think), religion has to be discussed from its practice rather than its theology. It's simply my experience that religion more often than not is used as a brother cattle prod by the socially reactionary, often in conjunction with nationalism and xenophobia. Certainly in our time.

Comity!

The debate over authenticity however destroys the necessary hypocrisy for progress. Let's take it out of religion to illustrate:

We-Shall-Overcomer: Those racists and Jim Crow-ists and white supremacists are UNAMERICAN! Forget their flag-waving or their old heritage.

Inquisitor: Wait, how can you say that? Didnt the starting Constitution grant slaves only three-fifths of personhood?

WSO: Well yes, but that was not true to the authentic American tradition of equality of all mankind.

Inquisitor: But didnt the US Flag serve to create and protect slavery, to legalize separate but equal in the highest court of the land?

WSO: Well yes, but they are inauthentic and unAmerican because....

Inquisitor: And didnt the very person who wrote all men are equal, Mr. America himself, Tommy Jefferson, own slaves, author race codes and write into the same equality document something about "merciless Indian savages"?

WSO: Well of course there were...

Inquisitor: And most of the heroes on the US money are slaveowners?

WSO: But. . ..

Inquisitor: Ergo, those folks with the sheets and the burning crosses, are part of an authentic original American spirit, no.....?

Martin Luther King: (Giving speech) It's time for this nation to rise up, and live out the true meaning of its creed, that 'all men are created equal' and --- oh screw it! {tearing up speech} Thanks alot, Mr. Inquisitor.

Sometimes even if it is authentic, as things develop in a nicer way, it is best to NOT CALL ATTENTION TO IT and let them feel good about it, so as to move things forward. (I do agree that outsiders shouldnt have to puff things up -- Bush saying Islam is a religion of peace only blows up in his face.)

E.g. on the other side, if they're debating in the Knesset that it goes against authentic humanist Zionism to deny Israeli Arabs their fair share of public life, it is not time to go into disquisitions on the darker ethnocentric themes in historic Zionist thinking, no matter how "authentic".

now there's a word you don't hear often these days. Comity indeed.

"Also, I was totally pwned by matthew."

"Pwned" better not be something condemned by the Second Vatican Council.

I think pwn4ge is generally considered halal.

true dat. In any event (as was previously discussed here, I think), religion has to be discussed from its practice rather than its theology. It's simply my experience that religion more often than not is used as a brother cattle prod by the socially reactionary, often in conjunction with nationalism and xenophobia. Certainly in our time.

Or, by the "virtuous" (whatever the heck that means). One of my friends who studies the Holocaust likes to point out how the Catholic church in Slovakia and Croatia often took lead in singling out Jews (even more than the Nazis), while the same church in the Netherlands actively resisted the Nazi persecution. I guess it's another fodder into the argument that religion is, even one with well-organized and developed hierarchy as Catholicism, is still an empty vessel where people can make what they will depending on who and what....

Ratzinger is not qualified by anything other than theological training to be Pope. I'm convinced there will be many other occasions in which he will compare unfavourably to Pope Wojtylwa, who was, by comparison, politically shrewd and diplomatically adept. Joachin Novarro-Walls (the late pope's press secretary) would never have allowed that sermon to be delivered. Unfortunately, Benedict is far more of a theological idealogue than his predecessor, and one of his idees fixes is that Christianity is EUROPEAN and mediated as much through classical civilizations as through Judaism. This truly is a shift in Catholic Biblical scholarship, dating all the way back to Pius XII. It will prove disastrous, in terms of maintaining interfaith dialogue, with BOTH the Jews and the Muslims. The day Ratzinger was elected was a sad day for Catholicism.

"This view is that Islam is inherently anti-rational and devoted strictly to learning from the text, with the added error of an arbitrary capricious God. But that is also not-coincidentally the Catholic party-line jab at conservative Protestantism. Quite subtle in Benedict's speech is an anti-Protestant (esp. anti-fundamentalist-evangelical) subtext"

Nice reading of the address; in. all likelihood Benedict is far more concerned about "erring" fellow Christians and secular Westerners than the beliefs of pious Muslims.

It's somewhat bizarre that any Muslim would expect the Pope to take anything but a staunchly Catholic position on the relative merits of other religions. I don't take my cues from the papacy but I'm not surprised when it unapologetically advocates Catholicism.

Moreover, despite Juan Cole's pleadings to the contrary, history is replete with examples of "forced" conversion to Islam, even if that was not Islamic " doctrine"-albeit a different, less maximalist, kind of forced conversion than practiced, by say, the Spanish Inquisition. (I guess Juan never heard of the Jannissaries).

Replete?

Funny word to use.

Forced conversion was genuinely rare in the Islamic world. Of course over 14 centuries one can find lots of examples, it is 14 centuries, but replete is at best inaccurate.

V.g. analysis, Matthew. Benny makes some rather neo-connish rhetorical moves in his speech, particularly in his attempt to appropriate the Hellenistic, rationalist strand in Western civilization for Catholicism, his equation of Western civilization with Christianity (very similar to Huntington's discussion of "the West" as a happy fusion of Christian and scientific culture in his Clash of Civs, actually), and his backhanded suggestion that Christianity is uniquely suited to provide the "soul" for modern scientific civilization.

It's pretty ballsy to be accusing others of blind faith when he himself represents a unscientific, irrational authority and an institution grounded in revelation. It's never a good idea to appeal to "pure traditions" unless you're prepared to defend them warts-and-all, rather than simply cherrypicking the parts you like.

Mark, I agree with you that one shouldn't expect the Pope to take anything but a staunchly Catholic position, but what makes his position hypocritical is that he claims to be speaking from a universalist, rational viewpoint, not a Catholic one - he's disguising his partisanship as universal reason (which is of course what all politicians must do but it doesn't fool anyone).

I don't think the "attack" on Islam was as grave as protestors are making it out to be, but it was certainly done in a stupid, disingenuous way, and I don't think the big questions of faith vs reason within Christian traditions are going to be resolved simply by attributing all that is irrational about religion to Islam and all that is "reasonable" about it to Christianity.

Our man Ben seems to be looking for a fight.

And along with a better PR person, he could really use some work on his nose and those bags under his eyes. Ewww.

"Replete?

Funny word to use."

Perhaps but playing at semantics is generally unproductive. Forced conversion is not an orthodox or religiously sanctioned practice in Islam but it happened, though we can spend all day debating what degree of coercion counts as
"force".

There's a rather lengthy treatment of the speech by an academic on the main BB to which I post, if any of you are interested.

Forced conversion is not an orthodox or religiously sanctioned practice in Islam but it happened

Of course there were instances of forced conversion, but by your own admission if the practice was not religiously sanctioned and there were incentives against it (i.e. mass converting everyone early on would put a dent in tax revenues), it's fair to say that "replete" is not a terribly precise term in this context.

In the case of Janissaries, due to the incredible potential for advancement in the imperial government, some (perhaps many) Xtian families were quite enthusiastic about handing their sons over to be trained in public administration, letters, war, etc. Religious or not, people can be quite pragmatic.

As well, there some good studies using surname changes/geneologies that show conversion to be gradual process over many centuries.

In short, I would be careful making logical leaps between one-off examples/practical incentives and a general practice of "forced conversion".

dear all,

as the stupid machine ate my comment of this morning ... by now e has already pretty summed it up.

in quantitative terms, x-ianity does not compare favorably to islam re: forced conversions. in islam they almost never happened.

what one CAN talk about, however, is the qualitative development of islam and christianity - the first towards a more rigid, ideologist stand & the latter towards a more flexible, philosophical one. (yes, i'm generalizing.)

of course, the vatican - as one of the few rigid, ideologist institutions in x-ianity - isn't exactly the one to hold this debate.

unfortunately, many in the muslim world don't realize that the pope is quite insignificant.

--raf*

Painful to see how the Islamist nutjobs are milking this for everything it's worth. They're doing what they can to reinforce the image of Muslims as little unruly monkeys. Meanwhile Little Green Footballs is having a field day. But on the other hand, it again confirms the schism between the Muslim religious organisations in Europe and that of Qaradawi and his like. Which is heartening. Goes to prove people only need decent conditions to become decent people themselves.

Though I profess ignorance, there is a great deal of scholarly debate about Islam's entry in India, how bloody it was or not. Seems Islam, on that front at least, participated in a vicious religious conflict.

dear klaus,

no "religious" conflict in india. and certainly next to no forced conversations. there's a good book by richard eaton (you can find it in the aqoul book section under "mena history / 13th-16th cent") on that subject.

enjoy,

--raf*

I don't play semantics, so don't take that tack with me. You made a stupid statement, that's that.

Forced conversion is not an orthodox or religiously sanctioned practice in Islam but it happened, though we can spend all day debating what degree of coercion counts as "force".

You can do so, but that wasn't the fucking question now was it, it was your characterisation of "replete."

An inaccurate characterisation on the facts.

If you wish to bang at Cole there are better grounds, even the darling of the American loonie tunes Lewis (who I note I respect as an historian) characterises forced conversion as a rare event in Islamic history.

In short, there are grounds to critique Islamic practice, but forced conversion as a general issue is not one of them.

Now re India, well there you have phases that match the worst criticism, lots of phases that were syncratic. Certainly India Hindu contact with the monotheisms (Xian and Islam) ran into the issue of "pagan" versus Abrahamic, where Xian and Islamic thinking both consider the pagans utterly invalid, historically. I disagree with Raf's characterisation on no religious conflict, certainly, but certainly on the issue of forced conversion again tax incentives alone made rulers forcing conversion very, very rare. Tax incentives married to theology that discouraged aligned theoretical and practical incentives.

Now, one can critique an ideological penchant for the idea of "opening" territory to Islamic rule by conquest - although that can be exagerated or the more spotty record on respecting minority rights (still comparing favourably with European Xianity until the mid to late 19th century, but falling well short of theory).

thanks, raf, I need to read something about India, will look it up.

Came across the curiousity that Hinduism wasn't opposed to homosexuality until the Brits invaded. Fairly odd, couldn't connect the dots there...

No religious conflict in India? Have you been paying attention in the last hundred years? Tens, if not hundreds of thousands, dead because of it (mostly during Partition).

The received academic wisdom about Islamization in India is that it occurred through a combination of incentives (ruling dynasties Muslim => helps to be Muslim), a genuine egalitarian appeal to lower castes, tax incentives (some Mughal emperors applied the jizya tax on non-Muslims) and sufis spreading the message. In North Indian popular wisdom, however, Islam was spread by the sword, invasions, the works (ignoring the fact that pillage and conquest were de rigueur at the time).

Sanjay Subrahmanyam has written an essay on religious conflict in medieval India that is readable and honest, most academics will give you the feel-good composite culture argument that blames modernity and the Brits for messing up harmonious relations between Hindus and Muslims.

The received academic wisdom about Islamization in India is that it occurred through a combination of incentives (ruling dynasties Muslim => helps to be Muslim), a genuine egalitarian appeal to lower castes, tax incentives (some Mughal emperors applied the jizya tax on non-Muslims) and sufis spreading the message. In North Indian popular wisdom, however, Islam was spread by the sword, invasions, the works (ignoring the fact that pillage and conquest were de rigueur at the time).

Actually the aforementioned Richard Eaton would take issue ( in part ) with all of these more traditional hypotheses.

Just to take one example, Eaton I believe ( and/or Peter Jackson, whose book on the Delhi Sultanate I've read much more recently ) points out that the argument that Islam is a particularly egalitarian religion is fairly modern one. It seems to have arisen in the 18th century in response to influences from the European enlightenment. Medieval Islamic theologians don't seem to have ever used that line of argumentation much, if ever. And in fact social status doesn't necessarily seem to have changed much with conversion. Poor, lower-class Hindus often enough ended up as poor, lower-class Muslims.

Conversion appears to have been a rather more complex affair, at least in some areas.

aha! aha! told you so! told you all there was scholarly debate and controversy. Goes to show how clever I am. The partition accounts for 1 million. It just had an anniversary, which is why I know.

I do seem to remember that sometimes Muslim missionaries would preserve castes to make Islam more acceptable to Hindu sentiments, an example of...whatsitcalled...some term signifying how religions borrow from each other.

"an example of...whatsitcalled...some term signifying how religions borrow from each other."

I'll wager syncretism. Syncretism.

diyalog zedelenmeyecek.barış barış barış

Yes on the syncretism, and there are still "lower" and "upper" caste Muslims in India (ajlaf and ashraf) but those who converted, rather than those who became Islamized by intermarrying with new Turkish/Mongol/Central Asian elites, are generally assumed to have been from lower castes. Lots of artisanal castes, actually. Most of the Hindus you'll find in Kashmir, e.g., are Pandits (Brahmins), because supposedly everyone else converted to Islam at some point.

Symbolic egalitarianism more than social equality, of course, but that's pretty important in itself. I was thinking of the demand side more than the supply side, i.e. reasons why people would convert rather than arguments made by theologians. The egalitarianism of Islam was novel enough and appealing enough in the subcontinent that it inspired some other more egalitarian and mystical religious movements too (Bhakti, Sikhism).

What do Eaton and Jackson argue were the main reasons for Islamization?

dear sp et al,

we were talking about conversions. my "no religious conflict in india" argument was made in that vein. conversion to islam in india was extremely rarely forced conversion. and quite frankly, i am very suspicious about any "popular wisdom" - north indian or other. if you ask around the middle east you'll hear that "women have been veiled since the beginning of islam" - which is crap. "popular wisdom" changes & is always colored by recent developments. what WAS spread by the sword was the control over a territory by rulers who were muslim. but that's hardly islamization.

re: partition, last time i checked it hadn't been about converting people.

in addition - there is actually a difference between communalism/sectarianism and religious conflict. the former are modern phenomena.

what eaton & others are arguing/showing is that the muslim newcomers quickly adapted to local customs & practices -- the became indianized.

cheers,

--raf*

Well Eaton was writing specifically about the case of Bengal. In medieval east Bengal, a relatively lightly populated jungle backwater, Hinduism of the more formalized sort had apparently not been well-established at the time of the Muslim conquests. The area lacked the strong centralized government and urban bases from which Brahminical orthodoxy became established. Accordingly Islam more easily penetrated the region as a folk religion, blending in with the loose Hindu cosmologies to become a rather heterodox 'religion of the plow.'

Meanwhile the slow eastward shift of the Ganges river system suddenly became dramatic and swift in the 16th and 17th centuries, leading to a major hydrologic restructuring of Bengal. The east exploded as it suddenly transformed from backwater to agricultural heartland and the local population boomed.

The finishing touch were waves of reformation in the 18th and 19th century in particular that sought ( with some success ) to purge the Hindu elements of those folk cosmologies, bringing the area more into line with 'normative' Islam.

Eaton book sounds great, thanks for the review Tamerlane.

Raf, I wasn't suggesting that North Indian popular wisdom is right - far from it - it's usually pretty bigoted, actually! I would disagree with you on religious-communal distinction to some extent, because you can't really separate one from the other and it's something of a pious fiction among Indian lefty academics and secularists that communal conflict is the product of conniving elites while good-hearted ordinary folk don't fight about religion.

But that's not really relevant to conversion, I suppose. I'd agree with the argument that conversion was mostly non-violent, though there were a few Mughal nuts who persecuted non-Muslims.

Well, the Pope QUOTES, not endorses, a Byzantine emperor's view on Islam, some self appointed representatives of the " religion of peace" start firebombing churches, and a bunch of "liberal" Westerners blame the Pope for exercising free speech!

Free speech is free speech, and it should be defended even when the Pope does it. I find it incredible ( or rather depressingly, hypocritical) that he is being attacked for expressing his opinion, which is not, BTW, the anti-Islamic screed it is being made out to be.

How quaint, someone who thinks public figures should just say what they think without regard for their own interests or the interests of key stakeholders.

Were you hatched from an egg 5 minutes ago?

Listen you stupid illiterate cunt of a moron, "Well, the Pope QUOTES, not endorses, a Byzantine emperor's view on Islam": Quoting without commentary IS endoresement in grosso modo.

Were I to quote as the Papist Leader did some passage about the idiocy of Catholicism, without real clarificatory remarks on the substance of the remarks (including differentiating should I disagree), readers would be well served by concluding my purpose, intent and real meaning regardless of post-facto denials, was to pimp said points of view.

Would I have a right to do so, well for bloody fuck's sake, yes.

Would I be right? Well that depends on the facts of the case, and regardless should my remarks be upsetting it is perfectly valid that semi-literate idiots such as yourself would bloody well rant on like a drooling moron about my offences against something.

That is the other side of expression, the criticism of the same.

some self appointed representatives of the " religion of peace" start firebombing churches, and a bunch of "liberal" Westerners blame the Pope for exercising free speech!

Leave the liberal Western thing aside you moron ic ideological cunt of an idiot. I presume you're following the usual American illiteracy of Liberal as Left. Most contributors here, include Mr. Hogan and myself are classic liberals. Libertarians in your language.

The red herring: the reaction in the Islamic world has been actually rather peaceful - have not personally seen any firebombing reports, but presuming that some sub-literate did so, I see no more reason to pull out the semi-veiled bigot language of 'religion of peace' in quotes for this than to call Xians religious bigots because some mouth-breather with your intellectual and analytical capcities fires his gun at a mosque after some mediatised incident, as has happened with no small bit of frequency, although the aggregate response is clearly different.

The hypocrisy of the "criticism" that you make merely highlights unexamined (or perhaps not) bigotry.

Ah bollocks, a pox on all partisans.

Free speech is free speech, and it should be defended even when the Pope does it. I find it incredible ( or rather depressingly, hypocritical) that he is being attacked for expressing his opinion, which is not, BTW, the anti-Islamic screed it is being made out to be.

Bollocks, "defending" free speech does not mean being un-uncritical cunt, nor does his opinion strike me as particularly enlightening, (see supra re quotations).

"Meanwhile Little Green Footballs is having a field day."

I seriously doubt Little Green Footballs can even locate the Middle East on a map. Most of these self-righteous "Islam is evil" bigots have never even seen a live Arab, but they sure "know" a lot about them.

What pisses me off is how some retards in the Middle East take any slight provocation to go on a rampage, giving bigots on the other side more ammo...

well, that's the problem in a nutshell, innit. A desire to whip people into a frenzy combined with the media's overwhelming tendency to focus on such people. That's the spiral.

The difference between this bout and the cartoon one is that while Jyllandsposten was a stupid little Jutlandish newspaper, the Pope is the head of the largest congregation in the fucking world. The sooner he realises that, the better. That in no way exonerates the hatemongerers in various Muslim countries, but happily it seems it's already dying down in the media here in Europe, there are more pressing concerns at the moment.

To : EERIE

Were you hatched from an egg 5 minutes ago?

________________

Yeah, from the free speech egg.Guess you were hatched from the public figures should just put out pablum all day, every day lot.
I guess its OK for the Pope to make indirect criticisms of Musllims and Muslims to respond by firebonmbing churches and making death threats. thanks for clearing that up.

[Ed: One again, fished out of the junkpile. Apparently our little hatchling hasn't quite figured out the passphrase mechanism]

LOUDONSBURY

Well I usually dont respond to vermin , but let me make a few points.
The Pope DID comment on the quote, and his comments make it clear that he did not fully endorse the Byzantine emperors statement. At the most , there was mild, indirect criticism of Islam. The response was death threats & church firebombings. You consider that peaceful? AWRIGHTY THEN! It must be so.
____________________

I presume you're following the usual American illiteracy of Liberal as Left. Most contributors here, include Mr. Hogan and myself are classic liberals. Libertarians in your language.

you presume wrong. But then your entire reply suffers from that quality. Admirable consistency , that.

Most of the criticism of the Pope's lecture ( or rather the one quote) has not been to discuss his ideas, but that (horrors) he said or implied something that could be held to be critical of Islam. Doesn't he know he can never, ever do that? Why if Muslims rise up and issue death threats, burn him in effigy, and firebomb churches, well those poor Muslims can't help themselves, can they? its all the Pope's fault. .

Re the puerile name calling from a safe distance away:

OK Ok, I agree that you are a real big man with a nine inch dick. Guess that was the purpose of all that wanking. You may have the last word. I'm done here.

Put it this way - as soon as the Catholics start picketting with signs that say "Behead those who oppose Catholicism" or "Your 9-11 is next" ... as soon as they or any member of their "religion" threaten violence as a means to an end, who really gives a rat's ass?

Those "people" scare me more and more each day. I try to give them the benefit of the doubt, but it sure is hard some times.

Boo! Ha, made you jump.

Well, obviously this provincial has never lived in Belfast nor the Krajina, nor Bosnia....

Put it this way - as soon as the Catholics start picketting with signs that say "Behead those who oppose Catholicism" or "Your 9-11 is next" ... as soon as they or any member of their "religion" threaten violence as a means to an end, who really gives a rat's ass?

Anyone who pulls his head out of his arsehole.

Ill-informed provincial navelgazing morons aside.