*These pages state briefly a range of comments and statements which have been made

See also Probing Islam Pt 2 & Probing Islam Pt 3

Polarised attitudes

Pope Benedict is head of a Church that has sought for 1,300 years to deny the truth of Islam.

The newspaper photograph tells you all (it was one of an obviously very angry bearded man screaming) - the face of Islam protesting an imaginary slight.

Protesters, rioters, effigy burners, - have they actually read the Pope’s speech, the whole speech ?

It is available on the Internet (true, you have to search quite a bit).

You cannot negotiate with a drunk with a knife and you cannot negotiate with those who manufacture offence as a weapon.

There has been far too much apologising (by the West) of late. When you face a face contorted with hate, you do not apologise.

You (the West) respond affirming your own rights and values … to pretend otherwise is to ignore history and the consequences of submission.

The foreign policies of western governments are immoral and counter-productive.

Why is it that the more fundamentalist Muslim nations become, the more oppressive they are towards all basic human rights?

A British citizen said: Muslims do not need British values. We believe Islam is superior, we believe Islam will be implemented one day.

Islamic fundamentalism (or integrism) considers modernist views and practices have led the faithful astray. It calls for a return to older, purer, more correct ways. Islam historians say fundamentalists reinvent tradition with differences.

We have had Christian, Islamic, Jewish, Hindu and Buddhist fundamentalists – they all reject ‘modern secular’, want the puritanical religious, and reject any developed and dominant world systems.

Extremists try to foster a sense of isolation and generate ghetto mentalities so as to embed their pernicious, perverted form of Islam.

Does not the violent Muslin minority show Islam is flawed? Far from oppressed, there is a supremacy complex.

Even among moderate Muslims, some consider the Koran ‘the perfect manifesto of God’ and so terrorists can kind encouragement for murder.

Believed a UK leader, he has declared that the flag of Islam will one day fly above Downing Street, and the country will live under hardline Sharia law.

Any suggestion that Islam is linked to the ideology of terror or violence evokes immediate outrage.

They (both Muslims and Catholics) all have access to Internet and world communications.

There is a fundamental incompatibility between Western and Islamic cultures.

Iranian leader Khamenei said the Pope had been manipulated by the United States, Zionists and Western Press, who seek a new “Crusaders War” against Islam and Muslims.

The worlds oppressors, said Khamenei, led by the United States, see their survival in creating religious tensions and the Pope held that policy.

Most religious analysts in France, a country with the largest Muslim community, agree the Pope made a mistake at a time when the world’s political atmosphere is heavy with religious confrontations.

There are clearly some Muslims who see the need for changes within Islam. But what prospect for positive effect?

The popular cast given Islam in Western media and culture, as a hijacked religion of peace, defies the true nature of much of its Teaching.

Extremist Islam will win battles, but Islam will surely lose the war.

Trying to change things through Britain’s democratic processes? The extremist said democracy is sovereignty for man, Islam means sovereignty for Sharia Law.

In the Christian world, fundamentalism arose in early 20th century USA where groups particularly Baptists called for a return to early-era theology, beliefs and practices.

Fundamentalism is gaining terrifying ground across the religious spectrum.

Islam contains the seeds of its own downfall.

Western culture depends on freedom of thought and expression, like it or not.

Defeat Islam? Why would the West want to? It is true extremists who push for conflict and war.

Can individual acts of violent sacrificial jihadi truly defeat superior technology, resources and organisation?

It is a scandal that so many persecutions have taken place in the name of Jesus.

Contrary to other religions, Muslim religious leaders never allowed any discussion, any debate about this faith, but only to confirm Islam’s traditional line in every matter of life.

There has been no reform in Islam, and anyone who tried to challenge it has often ended up assassinated.

A great danger is from a mental surrender to the irrationality and false logic of accusations of Western aggression (undertaken for defensive reasons).

To defeat the global jihad against free societies, it is vital to tell the truth that it is the West that is under attack.

People are being intimidated into silence about Islam, no one can criticise it without violence and mayhem breaking out.

Propagating the faith through violence is unreasonable.

The debate should not be about politics but psychiatry.

If one’s god was worth a plugged nickel, said god would give one guidance regarding how to handle one’s hate in a non-destructive manner.

Terrorism is like smallpox and must be eradicated in the same way.

There is a fundamental incompatibility between Western and Islamic cultures.

The world is not witnessing a clash of religions or cultures but a battle between modernity, ignorance and barbarism.

In the umma, community of believers, harm done to a Muslim is felt as harm done to all Muslims.

The imam of an Amsterdam mosque, years ago, said openly, ‘We produce more children, we will outnumber them’.

When informed (balanced) analysis has never been more critical, Islam and the Muslim world and global terrorism have become a growth industry attracting ‘experts’ and ‘ideologues’ alike.

‘We are not going to be beaten by a collective with the emotional age of a teenager who hates women because it can’t enjoy sex’.

Apostasy laws (abandoning a religion) are within at least 14 Islamic countries, punishable by death in some eight of these States.

Official proceedings against those who convert out of Islam are rare, most leaving Islam keeping it a secret, as irate citizens can mete out punishment.

‘Everyone has the right of freedom of thought, conscience and religion, also the right to change his religion or belief’. Universal Declaration of Rights.

The 1991 Gulf War aroused a sense of injustice and hatred. Some 70,000 Iraqi conscripts’ desert retreat across the desert was bombed by the U.S., an act remembered as humiliating and cruel by the Arab/Muslim world.

‘I support efforts for democracy in the Middle East, to avoid a future nuclear confrontation, in which Muslims will get the worst’.

Islamist militants want to cause the collapse of ‘artificial nation states’ into a caliphate stretching from southern Spain to northwest China.

‘We will take advantage of American kindness, gullibility and compassion’. (believed a hoax, on a US website message-board).

Islam, Christianity can never come to agreement: both are offensive to the other; ignorant expectations (of partial-believers) are supremely insulting.

A colossal sense of collective victim-hood at the hands of the Israeli David or the Western Goliath is also a key motivating force behind radical Islam.

‘Muslims suffer from inferiority and fragile egos, hence they are always being ‘insulted’ and ‘humiliated’ but Allah will fulfil his promise.’