ORIGINAL: Eddie_the_Hated
Yes I have to agree, I didnt really think about my usage of words when I was writing my posting. I' ll apologize for that. I didnt want to generalize and I am sorry that it sounded like that.
What I was trying to say is that Muslims are not a problem in my life. (They used to be, though. My grandmum is what you' d probably call an extremist and forced the religion on me by various means as in enlisting me in a Koran School that had dubious teaching methods[i.e. using force]. She also forced me to learn the Arabic language when I was younger until I decided to break any ties with her.)
See, we people in Germany try not to interfere with the people in the middle east and they do the same. But I am still somewhat offended by the things the extremists do and I see the cause in the religion. You can' t tell me those people are blowing up stuff because they are bored or something. They do it, because their " interpretation" of Islam tells them to do so.
On the other hand Christians are bugging me constantly. If you are living in Germany - you can' t escape them. They are maybe not attacking any people or doing some sort of terroristic activities but they themselves are annoying me way more than Muslims do. You have to imagine - every f' n time I go to the city and the Mormons/Jehovas Witnesses are around, they usually come to me and start some kind of argument. Because those people don' t understand no. I tell them I am not interested - they continue to talk. And if they somehow find out your adress, they' ll start VISITING you. This has led so far, that I can' t simply go into the city, but I am constantly on the lookout for those people. They might not be killing people, but they are still annoying in a way I cant stand which places them on a close second place.
As for Jews, I seriously didn' t want to generalize. What I was trying to say is that the only " bad" Jews I' ve ever heard of, are in the middle east. I didn' t want to say, that all Jews in the middle east are bad but that the only bad Jews I' ve heard of are located there.(This sounds like another generalization so I' ll say that I know that there are stupid Jews outside of middle east, but my point is that the majority of them, the extremists, can be found in Israel)
As for your other points, I already apologized and I didnt want to cause any offense with my statements.
And I agree, that we can' t simply forbid religion as this would be opossing the principles of free speech. But I feel religion has to be controlled much more(I am especially concerned about the exposure of children to religion) and under no circumstances be supported in any way by the state, including funding (Even if the state is only transfering the funds, like it' s doing in Germany. Because this always leads to some sort of bias. In Germany for example taxes are used to support various religious organizations, Jewish as well as Christian ones. But it' s not supporting any Muslim organizations. And there is no way, if you are a muslim, to make sure YOUR taxes are not used for things like that. And if you are an atheist, you are equally ***ed when it comes to your money.)
In my opinion religion should only be allowed to take as much a place in peoples lifes, as for example, the membership in a sports club does. But in no way should laws, holidays and even tv programing(In Germany Christian churches are having some major influence on the programming of state-controled public television because they are members of the broadcasting commission) be somehow influenced by it. Because the different belief systems simply can' t coexist without any tension (again in Germany the Christian churches are doing anything to prevent Muslim organizations to gain the same privileges they have) and to make sure this tension is reduced to a minimum we have to reduce the importance of religions all together to a point where they are equally unimportant. Only then religions will possibly be again about religion and not about power, money or killing people.
I should also add that a lot of my views come from the way things are around here in Germany. So maybe, wherever you live, the presence of religions is more subtile, but over here, especially the Christian churches are a big power that you can' t simply ignore and discrimination of people of other belief systems is very immanent and I dont see any way out of this mess but to lower the importance of religions.
< Message edited by Evilkiller -- 7 Aug 07 6:55:20 >