some thoughts on day 1

[Dan Jizzenberry]

"And what reason did Moslems have to hate the West
before 1947?"

The Crusades, colonialism, westerners claiming for thirteen centuries that 
Muslims were barbarians with no culture and no intellecutal achievements to 
speak of. Christian hatred of both Arabs and Jews predates hatred between 
Jews and Arabs by 8 or 9 centuries. It troubles me that so much of the 
current debate has been treated primarily as a religious matter. It's more a 
matter of politics and economics, with each side using religion to justify 
their own particular positions. Religion is window dressing, a good way to 
motivate people to hate other people whom they've had little exposure to. 
Despite what idiots like Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather, and other media hacks say, 
the Palestinian problem is not the product of ancient religious hatred. Jews 
and Arabs lived together with few problems (there were exceptions of course) 
until the 20th century (until calls for a Jewish state came about). Jews 
living in Ottoman lands were permitted to practice their religion freely 
(they had to pay higher taxes though, as did Christians and other religious 
groups living within the Ottoman empire), they frequently worked within the 
Ottoman bureaucracy, and had as much economic freedom as anyone else. Things 
weren't always rosy between jews and moslems but it wasn't moslems who 
murdered 6 million jews was it.



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