Polish engineer beheaded in Pakistan.

i am not condoning this barbaric behaviour by taliban but let me ask you this,is using chemical weapons on muslims(gaza)civilised or any different from what the taliban are doing?is bombing civilians at a wedding(afghanistan)and killing everybody there and claiming bad intelligence any different to taliban?no,i dont think so,the fact is afghanistan is a war zone,anybody helping the coalition who gets caught will be killed or tortured just like people who have been caught by the coalition,shipped to guantanamo and severly tortured and killed but ofcourse we are never shown the coalitions atrocities inflicted on the other side but we are shown the damage the enemy does.this is propaganda,todays wars are created,won and lost by the media,you control the media and you only paint a rosy picture of your part in the war and make the enemy look barbaric and vice versa.

Pakistani and Afghani Taliban prepare to join in
guardian.co.uk/world/audio/2009/mar/03/shah-taleban-pakistan-afghanistan

my girlfriend is indonesian (of chinese descent), the stories she has told me about the riots give me the opposite feeling and the reason her parents sent her to australia to study.

she says there is still an uderlying simmering of tensions and that chinese are still targets.

Every religious book is open to interpretation. That's why you have orthodox Jews who (at times) want to outlaw Reform or Conservative Jews.

I really don't believe (though I haven't, and probably should read it) the Koran is a violent religion. It's a religion that (like Christianity) offers "easy" salvation and usually comes with a lot of benefits (see Ottoman Turk policies, etc. etc.) for poorer people. Unfortunately poorer people are also the prey that religious fanatics love and that's where some of the problem lies.

It could have easily been misintirpreted Christianity, but instead (because of foreign invaders) it seems to be Islam.

No doubt the number of fanatics that use terrorism in Allah's name is higher than any other religion, but I'm not so sure that reflects on Islam.

ok, i'll give you that he whipped up the religious freaks on the right but this still wasn't a crusade.. although bush did use those words more then once.

regardless, it was a freaking big waste just like everything else bush touched. thank goodness that's over now.

Strange country, this Pakistan. Perfectly good Hindu people turned into islamic nuts.

About the only solution I see is for Pakistan and the like is what Atatürk did in Turkey. No screwing around, no nice talk, PC or so called human rights of some assholes against human rights of the whole.

Might be the answer, but apart from practical problems of feasibility, how would you react to the conceptual criticism of Kemalism? Presidential adviser and scholar Samuel Huntington argues that Kemalist Westernization always results in "torn" countries doomed to failure, because the cultural values (enlightenment, decalogue, democracy, tolerance, freedom of thought, etc.) imposed on them are alien to them. "Western intervention in the affairs of other civilizations is probably the single most dangerous source of instability and potential global conflict." (Clash of Civilizations) The problem is Islam itself. An enlightened Islam is a contradiction in terms and not doable, because (unlike the bible) the Quran is God's original command and not interpretable. Perhaps the best solution really is cultural relativism? We are we and the others are the others?

p.s. Gee, I forget the crude oil ;)

pakistan doesn't have crude, elb. but yes, west's meddling over there is the problem, imho.

I was referring to


and "the like" do have the oil, and that's a big prob.

the like are afghanistan, india.. they don't have oil either. the caucuses have oil but i wouldn't say they are "the like"

yes, thank you, plk, for your informative remarks.

I think is was clear from what I wrote in the first place that I was referring to a Kemalist approach to the worldwide phenomenon of Islam.

[news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/7964957.stm - More Dead

Pakistan ask for help

Whilst everyone is going on and on about Afaganistan and Iraq, there is a war going on in Pakistan, thousands of Pakistani soldiers and police have been murdered by the taliban over the last few years - unregulated madrasa are a cause for concern.

jihadwatch.org/archives/000690.php - Extremists

Finally in the UK we are cutting ties:

First half is true, second half is not if I assume that by saying that Quran is not interpretable, you mean that there is one and only one possible interpretation. Unlike some other religions, Islam does not endorse a central authority like a Vatican. Every reader is responsible for his/her own interpretation and Quran itself acknowledges and anticipates multiple interpretation sometimes contradictory, sometimes driven by personal/political interests and sometimes out of total honesty. Sure you can look towards scholars for guidance and there are some rules of the game but in essence nobody can claim a final interpretation and thats why the most important and most repetitive message in this book is to educate and explore. The problem is the followers or in this case, the Muslims. Its a human nature, everywhere that a majority prefers to follow the herd like sheep. You can tell them anything in the name of religion and they won't question you.

As for the Ataturk approach, well it has already been tried and it failed. Musharraf idealized him and tried to redo the whole thing is Pakistan, the result was extremely counterproductive. We didn't see extremism as a problem until early 2000s.

Why do you believe in that ? Why it has failed ?

reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSLT416246

this is what religious fanatics are able to do

pakistan_children_of_the_taliban_part_1_of_4/

make sure to check out all 4 parts.