From: ko@cns.umist.ac.uk (Kutluk Ozguven)
Newsgroups: alt.discrimination,alt.news-media,soc.culture.iranian,soc.rights.human,talk.politics.mideast,talk.religion.misc
Subject: Re: PROMINENT IRANIAN BAHA'I EXECUTED
Date: 15 Apr 92 22:48:55 GMT
Organization: UMIST, Manchester, England.


sepehr@acsu.buffalo.edu (Ramin S.) writes:

>I condemn those who are responsible for that to death , I also condemn
>a religion such as Islam in which there is no respect for other
>religions eventhough I was born in a muslim family . Not only they
>have no respect , but also they force others to accept their cr*p and 
>any objection will result death . 



I think Ramin was wrong in two points. First, his being of
"Muslim race" does not qualify him to make judgings about
Islam because Islam is what is written in Quran, not a set
of traditions that are handed from gen. to gen. Islam's
"respect" is also not a logical phrase, you should say
"believers of Islam disrespect" or "God disrespects".
Although often expressed with humanly characteristics in
Quran, since natural language is set to describe human behaviours,
God is not a human, or a super human, or god with human 
characteristics but above everything including human thinking
and imagination. Therefore "God disrespects" cannot be the word of
someone who read the Quran. "Believers of Islam disrespect 
non-believers" can be plausable but then the question "disrespect
according to which criteria" should be raised. In that case we 
have no way but to look at the historical behaviour of non-Islamic
communities and compare. Then we have Christians and Jews as the
major two comparable religions with Islam. The comparison should
be "under similar circumstances how do Christians and Jews act ?"
The US or Britain cannot be compared with Iran in its revolution
against what is considered non-Islamic forces, because we see
an established robust system in the first two and a new 
experiment following a chaos in the last. Historic comparisons
when religion was more important will show many examples of
Islamic tolerance to believers of any faith, when Christian
Europe massacred the Muslims or Jews in the acquired territories.
I belive the general atmosphere in Islamic and non-Islamic 
West is quite different, one feels it is in a poor condition and
enslavement, other worries that its political dominance is in
danger. Therefore we have to look at general perspectives of
different countries with different criteria.

But I personally believe that individual Christian's or Jew's
feelings against Muslim is much more negative than vica versa.
In Muslim countries, especially those with living with minorities
there is a respect towards any clergy and believer (when there is
no politics) while Christian culture considers Muslims together
with pagans or atheists which is quite irrational. I think the
general hatred against Muslims in Christian countries is not
a result of the gospels per se, but the historical characteristics 
of people. 

I have not been to Iran but this is a country where Christian,
Jewish and pagan religions co-existed with islam for more than
a millenium. There is no such Christian country with such a long
religious harmony. I think Iran, being opposed by almost all Western
countries and waged war against for long years both militarily and
economicly, may be tolerated by historians in its relative
paranoia with non-Islam/anti-Islam. Of course,
one prefers Iran or other countries give equal rights to all.
But generalization deep into the fundementals of Islam, is 
totally meaningless. Just read Quran (not the soundbytes 
without its context but the whole book) and decide whether Islam
is what you see or stands above all these, by yourself.

Kutluk