Well, it's nice to know that to get what you want from the election commissioner, all you have to do is threaten bodily harm. Wait, isn't that the favorite tactic of the Muslim terrorists? Oh the ironies...

So true Le Castor. It's worth mentioning this is Quebec, albeit a beautiful province but the most noted part of Canada for it's xenophobia and ethnocentricism (sorry to any open-minded Quebecois out there... I mean no offense). I live in Toronto where most immigrants I know moved from there due to blatant racial discrimination (Asian, Sikh etc.). So while currently the topic may seem to be discrimination against Muslims I believe that the cultural resistance towards minorities are not only against Muslims but to most minorities in general. Just thought I'd add that dimension to the debate.

but the broader question of how you allow freedom of religion to a religion that has as an integral part of it's nature a requirement that other people be pressured to conform isn't so easily answered. I think the best answer is for western countries to only allow immigration from Moslem countries of educated secular people.

I am very pleased to see that Quebec has decided to draw the line and stop kow-towing to Muslim demands at some point. LeCastor et al act very concerned about threats (angry phone calls?) to the election official, but won't comment on stories like the FBI warning local police departments to be on the lookout for "extremists" trying to get onto school buses.

In any case, on reading the linked-to story I noted that Egypt accused Canada of being "intolerant" over some recent incidents of Muslim agitation. Egypt, the same country where slam is the official state religion and primary source of legislation, where religious practices that conflict with Islamic law are prohibited, where Muslims may face legal problems if they convert to another faith, and where non-Muslims are required to obtain what is now a presidential decree to build a place of worship.

Of course, for all this to be effective they need dupes like LeCastor to carry their water.

No one is denying the horrible things that go on in many Muslim countries. No one. I am not.

But what we are saying is two-fold

(1) It's not Islam that is the source of the problem,

and therefore

(2) stereotying Islam and Muslims is therefore nonsensical. Plus, as an added bonus, it antagonizes people and only makes the situation more divisive.

I've told you this many times before, you stupid, stupid boy. To reduce all the problems of the Muslim world to Islam is incredibly simplistic and ignorant. You've got to be a real, excuse me for saying this, idiot to think that such reductionism can ever be close to the truth. Most importantly, you ignore the history of many of these countries, you ignore the underlying cultural forces of many of these countries, just so you can have a convenient, packaged explanation. This is not intelligent, it is not intellecutal, it's hardly even worthy of being engaged in any sort of serious debate.

To start, the problems in Muslim countries are not the same. Some have problems with female genital mutilation, some dont. some have problems with terrorism, some don't. some have problems with warring Muslims sects, some dont. It's 1 freaking billion people! Only a complete ignoramus could think that the problems of Indonesia and Burkina Faso can all be explained through Islam.

The source of the problem in the Middle East and in Africa is inextricably related to post-colonialism, corruption, authoritarianism, lack of a middle class. A lot of these problems are economic and have nothing to do with religion. Imagine France in the year 900 -- well, that's probably about as great as rural Morocco is today. imagine the religious fervor of France in 900 -- that's the religious fervor of rural Morocco. But the problems that France had in 900 were not very related to Christianity, they were mostly other factors.

How stupid, insipid, completely uneducated do you have to be to thinnk that Islam is the source of the problem. It boggles the mind.

Do you want to give me a spanking?

Talk about broad generalities, how could you know how related or unrelated they were, except in the broadest to the point of questionable meaning terms. Anyway it's hard to credit the comparison since modern "primitive" societies have examples of an alternative available to them when people in the past did not.

You do your legal training no credit here. The question at hand is, "How do Muslims treat non-Muslims, and why might that be?" The list I publish of how Muslim dominated countries treat non-Muslims is powerful evidence to suggest that the answer to the first question is - Not well. The history of Muslim terrorism and jihad - including using our own legal system against us - adds additional fuel to the fire. It is reasonable to infer from this that there may be something about Islam itself that is intolerant and expansionist.

Once we turn to a direct inspection of the core of Islam, we see that that inference is correct. The issue is not that Muslim countries are backward - they are - nor is it why are they backward, but rather why are they so oppressive towards non-Muslims. The Koran and the example of Mohammed is all the evidence we need to deduce why "radical" Muslims seems to think that their religion justifies violence against everyone else.

As for the "silence is golden" pseudo-imposter, I think business must come before plasure.

Golden Boy

PS I know you are dying to quote the Old Testament to me in response. Instead, tell me what you think about the Council on American-Islamic Relations suing the American passengers who reported the suspicious behavior of the flying Minnesota imams.

LeCastor is completely losing the plot with her pointless "France in 900 AD equals Morocco today" analogy, but her ramblings can serve as the basis of another observation, which you allude to. Sometimes we hear that Islam will reform itself, and it just needs to have teh equivalent of the Enlightenment - after all, didn't the West?

Sure, but the point is that the Enlightenment has already happened for everyone to observe. It is one thing to invent the wheel in 10,000 BC, and quite another to stare dumbly at a wheel in 1979 AD and say, "Uh, we'll invent something like that soon."