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Santorum may be right about Islam, but he's a hypocrite, a religious fundamental extremist himself. Remember when you tried to insert the amendment requiring the teaching of intelligent design (i.e., your religious dogma) into the No Child Left Behind Act, Ricky? You're just as religiously intolerant as those you attack.
Unfotunately, Tantawi may not live long, given other Islamic perception of him as an apostate. Even if Tantawi has warmed up in Cairo, other Egyptians still refer to Westerners or other Christians as "Zabbaleen," essentially unclean unholy "garbage people" who deserve little or nothing. To Islamic radicals, mercy means sparing an infidel of death because infidels don't have the right to life, among other things. From Morocco to the Phillipines, families and imams practice/endorse the killing of family members who convert away from Islam or become atheist. I should know. My mother was born and raised in an Asian Muslim country, and my father was, too, until his family moved to South America. The freedoms, humanity, and opportunity in The West are a stark contrast from Muslim countries, however "Christian" it is or once was. For over 1000 years, non-Muslims in most Muslim countries have been considered as 2nd or 3rd class citizens if they weren't enslaved, and they've been forced to pay a tax for being non-Muslim. To this day, evolution and many other modern ideas are outlawed (on pain of death in some places)... just as are modern/westernized clothing, music, magazines, etc.
Here is the text of Santorum's NCLB amendment. Real religious fundamentalist stuff that passed 91-8 in the Senate with Barbara Boxer as a cosponor.
(1) good science education should prepare students to distinguish the data or testable theories of science from philosophical or religious claims that are made in the name of science; and
(2) where biological evolution is taught, the curriculum should help students to understand why this subject generates so much continuing controversy, and should prepare the students to be informed participants in public discussions regarding the subject.
Just as religiously intolerant? For some contrast and a dose of reality, spend some time living in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, or the United Arab Emirites, four of the wealthier and modern Muslim countries and see what religious intolerance is over there. Speaking of the Enlightenment, it was Christian Europeans like Wilhelm Gottfried Leibniz (founder of infintessimal Calculus among other things) who tried studying thoroughly about other peoples, their religions, their philosophy, their arts, and their inventions. The Great Explorations of the Era of Enlightenment were all led with the purpose of attaining better trade routes for the European hunger for Asian spices and Asian goods (silk, Chinese Porcelain, Chinese Tea, Japanese lacquerware, Japanese art prints, etc.). From Versailles to Vienna, European Absolutists adorned their baroque and rococco palaces with fine Chinese vases and cabinets and even made Chinese pagodas and Japanese pavilions in private and public gardens... just as their forefathers had adorned their castles and medieval churches with Turkish and Persian rugs. And it was the Europeans who started Egyptology (while the Arabs and Turks sat on the pyramids doing nothing for 1400 years). But what of the Muslims? I do not always agree with his analysis, but Professor Bernard Lewis, the imminent Middle Eastern scholar of Princeton University (featured repeatedly by the NY Times) is correct when he says that the Arabs and Turks turned a blind eye to advances around them for well over 1000 years because they believed nothing could be learned from infidels, whether in Asia, Europe, or Africa. It wasn't until the British, Dutch, French circumnavigated Africa (thus, the heavily taxed trade through the Middle East died) and repeatedly defeated them and started appearing right before their noses in India and the Middle East that Muslims began to quietly envy the West for its prosperity, culture, and education.
And what of the enlightened, educated, and advanced Muslims of the Medieval Ages? What of the postmodern revisionist interpretation of Jihad as a peaceful personal struggle? That is all propaganda. Let's start with a history lesson. Any Iraq War veteran has heard of the magnificent ruins of Biblical Ctesiphon, the great ancient city just 10 miles downstream from Baghdad along the Tigris River. Ctesiphon was the capital of two successive empires (the Parthians and Sassanids) for more than 500 years during which it was the LARGEST city in the world and the home base of Zoroastranism. In contrast to the Germanic and Central Asian barbaric hordes, the Parthians and Sassanids were the biggest empire and true civilization to thwart the Romans and Byzantines. The Romans/Byzantines did manage to conquer the Ctesiphon 5 times but always returned it. In contrast, when the Muslims conquered Ctesiphon in 637 AD in the spirit of Jihad (just 5 years after Muhammed's death and 10 years after the last Byzantine siege), they laid waste to the enormous metropolis and turned it into a ghost city. The Zoroastrian priests referred to the Muslims as "demons of wrath" and stated that Babylon and Persia had never had such horrific conquerors in the past 1000 years. The Muslims purposefully burned the palaces, archives, and vast libraries full of Greek, Roman, Asian, Egyptian, and Magi literature. Literature was either burned or thrown into the Tigris because they were blasphemous. The same outrageous assault on learning and civilization continued as the Muslims conquered Jerusalem, Egypt, Turkey, Greece, Constantinople (Muhammed had specifically called for the destruction of Constantinople), Spain, Southern France, parts of Italy, the Balkans, and Hungary, all in the name of Jihad. During the two sieges of Vienna (1529 and 1693 - during the Age of Enlightenment!), the Turks and their Arab allies destroyed every Austrian town they encountered and slaughtered almost everyone.
That is not to say that the Muslims of the Medieval Ages had no education. They certainly had the opportunity to gain and learn about Medicine, Mathematics, Arithmetic, and Engineering from the peoples and civilizations that they conquered (the Sassanids of Babylonia and Persia, the Jews in Palestine, the Alexandrine Greeks in Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor, and Greece, the descendants of Roman civilization in North Africa and Spain), and they didn't manage to destroy all the literature. Thus, the Muslim libraries did include "long lost" Greek and Roman literature that the Renaisance scholars embraced with enthusiasm. And given the lack of learning among Muslims, the Ottomans for instance left much secretarial and governance to Greek and Armenian mandarins, to name a few. But obviously the perspectives and importance of Aristotle, Greek philosophers, and other authors was lost on the Muslims. For a period of time, the Greek scribes were allowed to translate military works and some philosophy into Arabic and Turkish. Their Greek scribes longed to translate other works into Arabic and Turkish, but they were forbidden to translate any Greek poetry, drama, history, etc... and eventually translation of philosophy was discontinued. Thus, Sophocles, Ovid, Herodotus would not be uttered largely except in Greek among the Greeks enslaved or inservitude by the Muslims... and Classical ideas therefore could not filter to the masses of Muslim peoples. What a stark contrast, then, in Italy when more Greek and Roman works were embraced and elevated during the Renaissance, evident to this day through art and architecture and the growth of Humanism. And despite the explosive spread of the printing press throughout Europe and Asia, the Islamic world didn't establish its first one until the 1700s in Istanbul... and then a second printing press in Egypt by an Albanian in 1822. Thus, there was no way for the Muslim world to keep up with the European and Asian Industrial Revolutions.
WRONG, fortheglory. The Santorum amendment was not part of the final bill. It was stricken from the bill and did NOT pass 91-8, as you claim.
http://www.millerandlevine.com/km/evol/santorum.html
At least you are correct about most of the text of the amendment. The reason that evolution generates so much controversy is that religious fundamentalists like Santorum keep trying to undermine its teaching.
Yes, constantine, I was making an individual comparison (Santorum as an individual compared to religiously intolerant individual Muslims), but you are making a societal comparison. Apples and oranges. America as a whole is clearly more religiously tolerant than other societies, but it wouldn't be like that if Santorum had his way.
Don't take Tantawi and those Moslem scholars in Britain to seriously. Tantawi is no liberal. He is a traditional Islamic supremacist and thoroughgoing anti-Semite. The Moslem scholars in Britain are telling us infidels what they think we want to hear. Moslem religious authorities cannot go against the requirements of Allah in the Koran, or against Muhammad in the Hadith, both of which require jihad (both violent and non-violent) against non-Moslems until Islam reigns supreme in the world. None of these Moslems should be taken seriously about being liberal until they openly renounce the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam which ALL 57 Moslem countries, with the approval of the highest Islamic religious authorities of those countries, have subscribed to and which makes ALL human rights subject to the Sharia.
It seems that in EchoesoftheEnlightenment belief system there can be no tolerance of a Christian fundmentalist's viewpoint. Now he'll probably tell me that fundies can hold to any religious belief that they desire, but they have no right to dictate law based on their bible...am I right Echoes? To that I say that I don't see them as dictating law based on their bibles. I see them fighting for laws to be passed (or repealed) based on their own particualr worldview. That is the essence of democracy. A person's worldview is formed by the effect of the entirety of his life's experiences, his genetic makeup, etc. Included in this formation is his stance on theological issues and how they affect the culture in which we live. We have no right to tell him to disregard this facet of his personhood, as it is integral to the totality of his being. He has every right to use his entire worldview, regardless of its origin, in fighting for (or against) any particular issue to be decided in legislature or courtroom.
Please read, and urge news channels to discuss MUSLIM MAFIA by Gaubatz and Sperry http://muslimmafia.com and sign the PETITION to have CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) investigated by US Congress (http://actforamerica.org/index.php/petition-against-cair)
Bravo to Santorum for an intelligent, principled article that calls out extremism.
Jump to conclustions much, legatus? Christian fundamentalists have every right to express their opinions and fight to get laws that they want passed. I never said anything to the contrary, and you just put words in my mouth so you could make a nice straw man argument.
However, the First Amendment forbids government from enacting laws that favor one religion over another. The Founding Fathers, who were products of the Enlightenment, realized that allowing any religion to gain supremacy would lead to loss of liberty. The Founding Fathers wisely recognized that the only way to ensure the maximum liberty was to eliminate possible tyranny of the majority.
I never said Santorum doesn't have a right to express his opinions. Try reading what I actually write next time.
Oh the pompous pontificating, and I do not mean by Santorum!
Wrong again Echo. The Santorum Amendment passed the senate on June 13, 2001 by a vote of 91-8. The amendment was later included in report language of the HR 1 Conference Report on page 703. Report language while not having the force of law should be used by authorities subject to the law to interpret the will of the Congress. As such states were encouraged to look at their science curriculum on biological evolution to see if it was consistent with the report language, but were not required by law to change it. Finally, there is nothing in the language that mentions Intelligent Design. The language is unambiguous with respect to its call for true intellectual freedom in the classroom. That is something that appears to be a threat for the believers in biological evolution.
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