But that that is not my point.

My purpose was to point to the racist manner in which the author ignores Islam’s diversity and inclusivity.

A point you obviously miss in her article but ironically derive from my brief comment.

The issue of Sharia in Britain speaks to the Muslim community there and is particular to its context.

Yet the author is quick to lump Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Salman Rushdie into her analysis., for example. She also ridicules the Qur’an.

It is this lumping together and gross generalities about Islam that is racist.

Also, I have not said that Islam belongs to any race. This is your assumption.

Nontheless, thanks for your little misguided lecture on Islam and race.

Ridwan Laher

The largely villified and misunderstood Nietzsche got it about right when he described organized religion as ‘voluntary stupidity’. So many volunteers! So much stupidity!

Ridwan,

That very comment you just made is racist. There are 1.3 Billion Muslims in the word and – guess what – approximately 1 Billion of then are not Arab!

There are Anglo Muslims (Balkans and Chechnya), Asian Muslims (India, Malaysia, Thailand, Burma and Indonesia), Black Muslims (Africa) – and there are evn Arab Muslims, too!

So, how can criticizing Islam be racist – unless you think that true Islam can only be practised by a particular race?

Time for a reality check.

If Ms. Adams familiarized herself with the debate in Britain she will know that the Archbishop was only opening up a discussion of very limited application.

He was talking about allowing certain aspects of Sharia as it pertains to divorce, for example, to apply where so chosen.

He was also very clear that Sharia could not be at odds with British law.

What he was not saying is the kind of racist nonsense that lumps all Muslims together in an unwarranted and biased diatribe.

Can anyone take Adams’ serious when she level this kind of racist ignorance at the Qur’an:

“How can you maintain stability when your holy book is brimming with god’s tricks and tests with the sole purpose of separating the goats from the sheep?”

And this from someone who assumes she can speak on behalf of civilization.

No thanks to this kind of disgusting bigotry.

Ridwan Laher
South Africa

Permanent secular democracy. Sacred texts and traditions have zero authority in US courts, and that’s the way it will always stay.

Anyone working to change that is an enemy of the state.

Short and sweet.

First of all, she assumes that the Archbishop actually said was what the US media claimed he said. Yet, all he was talking about were thing which already exist in English law or exist already in regard to Christianity and Judaism. Anything else would infringe the European Convention of Human Rights (equality before the law!) and would be struck down by the European Court of Human Rights.

As for Ms Ayaan Hirsi Ali, she is a Dutch citizen, although she seems to have acquired that nationality by fraud, and has gone to live in the US at the invitation of an Israel Lobby think tank. It is for the authorities of the place where she chooses to live to provide her with protection if she needs it. As a Dutch citizen, she can live in any EU Member State and will recieve whatever protection is necesary there. There is no doubt that Europe heaved a sigh of relief when she went to the US and nobody wants to see her coming back here. As long as she lives in the US, it for the US authorities to protect her. If she needs private protection, her Israel Lobby friends are not poor and money spent protecting her is money that will not be spent killing Palestinian children! Ms Adams will thus certainly not be excused for assuming that the Dutch authorities’ unwillingness to protect her in a country where the Dutch police have no jurisdiction has anything to do with Islam.

As for the French, they are having municipal elections next month and Sarko is in deep trouble. He is thus running around even more frantically than usual, promising everything that he thinks will get him a few votes. The French promises will be forgotten after the elections! Yet another unwarranted assumption!

All in all, and the pseudo-feminist poses notwithstanding, the article is an amusing melange of ignorance, racism and anti-Muslim bigotry. Wouldn’t have been more at home on an Israel Lobby site?