Friendship wrote: The Muslims watched a video-trailer on Muhammad Rasulullah made by an ignorant follower of the Islam brought by Moses and briefly mentioned by Jesus. They then went into rampage killing innocent Ambassador chris, three Americans and seven of Libyans. History repeats itself, for the weapons made by the clan of Banu Qaynuqa (or Qurayzah and Nadir) who were craftsman was turned against them. The weapons manufactured by USA was used to kill Ambassador Chris. Which of the Signs of Allah is the world rejecting?

This is the kind of twisted Muslim jingoism that gets my blood boiling!  An angry Muslim mob murders ten people, and you blame the Americans for selling them the weapons??

Intellectualism is not on producing weapons with their disastrous recompense, but fighting with the tongue as demonstrated and emphasized by Muhammad Rasulullah. The only way out is to educate the neglected despised Muslim  youths by teaching them the Sunna (actions) of Muhammad Rasulullah and not the bare holy Qur'an. It is ineffective in maintaining peace.

You have it backwards.  It is the hadith and sunna of Muhammad that teach aggression and violence.  It was Muhammad, not the Quran, who advocated and practiced jihad as perpetual warfare against nonbelievers and infidels (with the sword, not "the tongue", as you put it).  The Quran says "there is no compulsion in religion."  Muhammad said, "whoever changes his religion (from Islam), kill him."  Where do you think Muslim extremism comes from?

Friendship wrote: It is you who will now challenge them to be fair to reason commonsense logic and all that civilization calls for in the ability of man to be guided through listening and choosing between good and evil.

Yes, it is we who are left with the burden of challenging Muslim fanatics; and when we do, we will be accused of interfering with internal Muslim affairs.

Why is it never the Muslims themselves who challenge such outrageous behaviour in the name of Islam?

Preaching for peace and justice to prevail is our common goal and not restricted to a particular Messenger. You should accept what is good and stop rejecting that good that comes from Muhammad.

Tell that to the rioters in Egypt and Libya and Yemen and Iran.  Don't bother telling me. I'm just sitting in my room typing messages.  They are burning buildings and killing innocent people, and desecrating the reputation of Islam in the process.

You have to come out and fight your Governments dealing with despots for they supply them  with arms to fight and annex those fighting  them with the tongue! Is the West now arming the 'Arab world? Is the west not aware of the dangers of illiteracy among people? What does the West stand to loose by accepting Muhammad to be a philosophy whose sayings cannot be matched with any world  leader from antiquity to today? Stop his hatred and deception!

As a matter of fact I do oppose many of my government's policies in this regard.  But who is more to blame -- the person who sells the gun, or the person who buys it and commits murder with it? 

Your system of democracy has failed! You want worldly comfort, but your system of democracy has utterly failed.

 Look around, Friendship.  Which countries are thriving and prospering, and which are in perpetual tyranny, turmoil and chaos?

Friendship wrote: Then forgive me. I am sure I have expressed my views that mankind is a Muslim for the Arabic word means one who submits to the Supreme Being. Probably if I call you a Muslim you will deny that. t is not an offense for the forum addresses those with faith.

To call me a Muslim would be to associate me with the mobs of rioters that are currently rampaging in cities everywhere.  Unless you can agree that they are not true Muslims and do not represent Islam, then yes, at this moment I would regard it as an offense to be called a Muslim.

Then how are you going to change their attitude if you do not know what is expected from them so as to correct them by non-violent force or otherwise? Therefore the hadith of Muhammad that you fight them with the tongue is indeed what is to be done by all.

The question is not how I am going to change their attitude.  The question is how are you going to change their attitude?  They won't listen to me, but they might listen to you.  If you think the hadith that can help you with this, then go ahead and use them; but there are also plenty of hadith and sunnah that they can use to justify their hatred and violence, as I'm sure you know.

The British newspaper The Telegraph has a great editorial on this subject.  I'll just quote the last few paragraphs, but the whole thing is definitely worth reading:

Video defaming Prophet Mohammed is a con job that pits fundamentalist Christians and Muslims against freedom ... Perhaps even more concerning is the way extremists have learned to echo one other across our global village. We face the prospect of rabid anti-Islamist activists posting intentionally offensive clips on internet sites that are then trolled by radical Islamists looking to incite their followers to violence. It is a sick, symbiotic relationship: tribal identities caught in a defensive crouch, lashing out at the 21st Century world that promises their extinction. The real geo-political fault line of our times is not Left versus Right or even West versus East, but freedom versus fundamentalism. Those who believe that all Muslims are bad or all Muslims are good reflect the same sickness � and the challenge for the rest of us is to present an example of fearless pluralism that makes the haters in this world look small, weak, and definitively on the wrong side of history.

Friendship wrote: But how can we achieve pluralism when we do not know how one faith dovetails into the other. How can we achieve pluralism when one says the Torah is not the Bible and vice-versa and the Qur'an is not a recitation coined from the previous scriptures? How can we have pluralism when 6 billion people are not allowed to touch and read the Qur'an? How can we have pluralism when the despots are those supported with weapons to fight those who want to educate the world for peaceful co-existence?

We don't need to know "how one faith dovetails into the other".  You seem to think that pluralism requires or involves some kind of consensus or consolidation of faiths.  It does not.  Pluralism is simply the recognition and acceptance of the diversity of faiths.  There is no need to reconcile them.

I am a humanist; my neighbour is a Christian.  He probably thinks I am doomed to an eternity in Hell, but that's my problem.  I think he is wasting his life serving an imaginary god, but that's his problem.  In the meantime, we can still be good neighbours, and maybe even good friends.  At the very least, we can still wish each other well in our separate journeys through this life.  That is pluralism.

What do you mean by "6 billion people are not allowed to touch and read the Qur'an"?  I don't know of any country where the Quran is censored or not allowed.

I am not unaware of the impossibility from the present status quo. But the moment the People of the Book understand the difference between 'Peace" and 'Facing the Ka'ba' and that 'Peace' does not necessarily imply facing the Ka'ba, that is when we can live in harmony.

The People of the Book already understand the difference.  They do not think that peace implies facing the Kaaba (in prayer).  So what do you mean?

The real geo-political fault line of our times is not Left versus Right or even West versus East, but freedom versus fundamentalism. The Telegraph is theoretical and not practical. I AM AN INSIDER AND I AM ASSURING YOU THAT THERE IS NO FREEDOM OF ACTION IN THE MUSLIM UMMA.

Yes I know, and so does the writer in The Telegraph.  That is the point.  The struggle between freedom and fundamentalism is internal to each culture.  It exists both in the Muslim Ummah (where fundamentalism seems to have the upper hand), and in the Western world (where freedom is relatively strong but Christian fundamentalism is on the rise).  However, the fundamentalists in both societies have the common goal of provoking confrontation between the religions, as in this case.

Ron Webb wrote: Still not a word against the thousands (perhaps millions!) of fanatical Muslims destroying buildings and murdering their innocent occupants in cities throughout North Africa and the Middle East, eh?  Why not direct your message of "peace" to them?

Number Of Iraqis Slaughtered In US War And Occupation Of Iraq " http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq/iraqdeaths.html -

truthnowcome wrote: Number Of Iraqis Slaughtered In US War And Occupation Of Iraq "1,455,590" Number of U.S. Military Personnel Sacrificed (Officially acknowledged) In U.S. War And Occupation Of Iraq 4,801 Number Of International Occupation Force Troops Slaughtered In Afghanistan: 3,183 Cost of War in Iraq & Afghanistan?$1,373,424,753,393

I was opposed to the wars in Iraq and Aghanistan too, but what do they have to do with this video?

honeto wrote: Ron, there is nothing wrong with protesting an insult. If you were walking with your mother in a mall, and some guy insulted her, would you do anything?

Sure I would.  I'd go attack an embassy.  Or if he's a Muslim, maybe I'd vandalize a mosque. 

So the reaction is natural and justified but what you do has to be inline with your beliefs, and of course those people have been wrong when killing innocent people and destroying property.

They are wrong to involve innocent people at all.  And they are wrong to participate in a demonstration that they ought to know would probably turn violent.  At the very least, they are wrong to remain on the scene once the violence starts.

Can you point out to me any Hadith that you claim these people used to justify their actions for what they did?

I don't know, and I don't particularly care; but clearly they think it is justified, and that's what matters.