I had planned on seeing this film (I dislike Bush and American idol and would love a parody), but halfway through, I changed my mind. Sorry, folks. It was a great idea to have an Arab as a contestant on the show, but I guess Hollywood can't handle one without mentioning the word "terrorist" in there somewhere. Can't they ever show a normal Arab or Muslim in a movie, one where he or she doesn't have a gun or has a terrorist buddy? Come on, Hollywood, it's 2006!

As a Muslim, I condemn the 9/11 attacks as against Islam. Murder is one of the worst sins, and using God's name to do it...well that's one of the worst things I can think of. There is no link between Islam and terrorism, but a bunch of hijackers tried to make one. They weren't good Muslims, what kind of Muslim goes to a strip club and gets drunk the days before 9/11? What kind of a Muslim murders innocent people and twists religion to fit his agenda? No, they don't speak for Islam, and as a Muslim, I want nothing to do with them.

I don't know how the film ends, but I want people to remember the real aftermath. Muslims around the world condemned 9/11. American Muslims were donating blood and nationwide held candlelight vigils at mosques around the country. Every country with the exception of Saddam Hussein sent condemnations and condolances. I cried watching the funeral of a Muslim police officer was off-duty and rushed into the WTC to save people.

Al-Sadr really wasn't our problem, until we decided to jump in and make him one.

The US shut down his newspaper for being a little too angry (but he didn't call for attacks on troops). Then, when Israel assassinated an old man in a wheelchair, he announced he supported Hamas (which got him some popularity). The US would have none of this, and immediately moved to arrest him and started rounding up his followers. Al-Sadr lived through this before, his father and brothers and uncle were killed by Saddam Hussein.

He barricaded himself inside the Shi'ite holy shrine of Ali (may God be pleased with him). Iyad Allawi decides to lose all tactfulness and cheerleads the US, basically telling them to bomb it. Shias around the world protest, the US looks like Yazid (if you don't know who he is, then why are we in Iraq?!), Allawi loses re-election badly, and Al-Sadr gains respect from everyone for standing up to the US, and the US backs down.

Up until the sectarian conflict where Sunni shrines were burned down by shias and taken over in other cases, things were not so bad. Now they're really awful.

I disagree with Jen27 when she says "Olmert ran on a ticket of pulling back to the 1967 borders, which the Palestinians had asked for. Hamas ran on a charter of completely annihilating Israel."

Hamas has de facto recognized Israel for quite a while now, and her claim that Hamas only wants to annihilate Israel hasn't been the official party line for a while now. Mark Levine, an Arabic-speaking Middle east scholar, wrote this:

I have interviewed Hamas people who've discussed the truce issue and I have called them on it too. In fact, last time I met with a senior leader in Gaza I asked him whether the death of Oslo meant Hamas would join the calls for a one or binational solution being increasingly advocated by Palestinian and Israeli academics, or even push harder for an explicit Islamic state solution, as mentioned in various core documents of the movement. He looked at me like I was crazy, and actually said, "Are you crazy? We want a divorce, not to live closer to Jews." You can interpret it however you want. His interpretation, offered in his next sentence with a lot of exasperation, was "Just give us a state and leave us alone already."

The Israeli military still hasn't stopped the Qassam rockets or found its kidnapped soldier, but it has located some Palestinian farms and destroyed more orchards with dastardly olive trees and other crops that have now been destroyed. Were those a threat too?

Israeli government official Dov Weisglass was pretty candid when he said how Bush's Road Map is the perfect plan for the Israelis to triumph over the Palestinians, "It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that's necessary so that there will not be a political process with the Palestinians...Because what I effectively agreed to with the Americans was that part of the settlements would not be dealt with at all, and the rest will not be dealt with until the Palestinians turn into Finns."

I don't like where some of these responses are heading.

Who says God deemed women inferior? Christianity may say that, but Islam doesn't. Islam allows women to lead prayer services under certain conditions, Catholics never. Islam says that women are spiritually equal to men, Christianity claims that women were the first to sin and are called "weeds" in the New Testament.

It's not Islam that's the problem, it's extremists who the majority shuns. Polling shows that only 1% of UK Muslims believe the 7/7 bombings were "right."