The problem with that - Juandos - is that respecting the grave sites of Islamic terrorists is way more than they diserve. They are not properly Islamic, and by the formal rules of Islam they would be condemned. In fact, I think we should give Saddam Hussein to an Islamic court, and similarly when the time comes OBL et al. Best if they are shown to be evil even in Islamic terms by Islamic judges. But then, if that happened, you might really respect Islam after all.

Read this: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101041129-785360,00.html and you can see how 2-faced Pakistan is in the war on terror

American's should start treating thier prisoners like the Islamist's treated Margarite Hassan. Respect, my ass. Maybe on the day you start repecting your own religion.

Your kidding, right ? Respect people who chop off heads ? You clowns have set yourselves back yet another 2000 years..

The adage a little knowledge is dangerous thing really comes to mind after reading SWB latest slogan maserading as an argument. Where shall we begin... what can you tell someone who gives such a good impression of knowing nothing and caring less about knowing nothing. Lets see how about trying to point out that the distinction between using a word polemically and conceptually: You can call anyone or anything fascist (in fact many people on the Left tend to use fascist as an insult). Just because someone call his or her bank manager a fascist after having their loan application turned down … does not mean we should conclude that the bank manager who has been called a fascist is one So far several times SWB has been asked to substantiate his idea about Islamism being equivalent to fascism – it seems the best he can do is cite Jan Colijn, 46, a bookkeeper from the central Dutch town of Gorinchem states: "there is a kind of Muslim fascism emerging here," he said. Indeed. SWB fails to mention or notice that this same Jan Colijin who complains about immigration to Netherlands. If your are idea of the Dutch is culled from a scence from Pulp Fiction than you can be forgiven for believing that everyone in Holland is just drugged out easy going post-hippie hippe, and you would not notice that way people in Europe talk about race is through immigration. Nor would you wonder why Pim Fortyun (ex Marxist anti-immigrant campaigner- echoes of Mussolini ex-socialist who went from valouring class to worshipping the nation) become so popular in ‘liberal’ Netherlands. SWB often rightly condemns instances of what he considered to be anti-semetism – I remember his anger at Syrian television use of the Protocols of Zion, so it is rather surprising that he silent about the far greater level of violence, social exclusion, currently being meted out to Muslims in Europe. Perhaps, if he understood the history of anti-semetism and rise of fascism he would be so less sanguine about the way in which Muslim and other people of colour are subjects of violence. The frierkorps and other fascist groups often legitimised their acts of violence as defending their communites from Jewish agitators. Racists in Europe justify murder of ‘immigrants’ (and most places in Europe one is still immigrant even if you are born and bred in the country) and destruction of their property in terms of defending themselves from post 9-11 Muslim extremists. One does not have to be a great mind to see the echoes in the current treatment of Muslim minorities and treatment of Jewish minorities in 1930s/40s. Within last fifty odd years Jews in German and Muslims in Bosinia have been among the most ‘assmulated’ minorities to have been sent to European concentration camps. SWB forgets that it was a liberal Dutch contingent that allowed 8000 Muslim boys and men to be murdered in Serbencia in 1990s. But I wonder whether Muslim death would be of much concern to SWB. If SWB thinks Islamism is equivalent to fascism except as form of invective than perhaps he needs to explain what he understands by fascism and how he makes the equivalences. Maybe if SWB read a serious book about fascism he would not have to rely on randomly selected Dutch racist from a newspaper cutting as proof of the merit of his “argument”.

I'd say the biggest difference is expansionism. Being a nationalist and protecting your culture, even if it is one of drugged out easy going post-hippie hippe transexuals, does not make you a fascist.

SWB is just putting the cap on the bottle.It might not look right or fit well, but it's a good fit.Sorkoi, your just ticked off that most of the world sees supposed modern Islamics for what they are : WMDS ( that's short for DUMMIES )..

Well, I think that a case can be made to call Islam a form of Totalitarianism. It insists on fusing religion with state. It imposes mandatory economic constraints such as a ban on Cost of Capital (aka interest). I don't see any other religion out there that formally imposes such economic limits. If religion is an anything goes type of deal, whereby anything can be stiplated and justified to the world under freedom of religion, then it basically allows a loophole big enough to drive anything through. You may as well forget about having any human rights then, since your religious loophole is allowing anything to bypass human rights. If you are a civilized person however, and recognize that not everything can be defended in the name of religion, then you need to recognize that there are universally applicable human norms which might be transgressed by religions. You need to recognize that religions are merely supernatural belief systems which have formed across history over a wide variety of conditions. This means that all sorts of practices and beliefs can have been incorporated into religions. It's not like there's been some QUALITY CONTROL BOARD vetting all the religions as they've formed over history, to ensure the bad practices are kept out. So I would disagree with any assertion that religion is incapable of exhibiting fascism. There is nothing inherently mutually exclusive about religious ideology and political ideology (eg. fascism, communism, etc) -- particularly in regard to the salient features (cost of capital = evil [islam, communism], state under religious control [communism, islam], charge special taxes on infidels [islam, fascism], suicide bombing gets rewarded in heaven [islam, fascism], second-class status for women [islam, fascism]) Muslims say suicide bombing is the resort of those who don't have strike aircraft. But how is it that the socialists had these things, while the Muslims don't? It seems to me that it's because Islam seems to promote technological backwardness. Technological progress is a normal product of a healthy society. Distorted and repressed societies like Islamic and other Totalitarian societies are incapable of this. Where's the technological progress in North Korea or Pakistan or Iran, aside from the nuclear technology they've focused on buying/stealing from others? If you want to judge whether a creature or a microscopic organism is healthy, you analyze its inputs and outputs. When you look at Islamic and Communist countries, they don't produce any useful output, other than weapons. It's ample proof of their skewed and distorted nature.

"It might not look right or fit well, but it's a good fit." Something that does not fit well cannot by defination be a good fit. The incoherence of your setnence mirrors the incoherence of statements regarding Islamism. If all 'modern Islamics' as you put it are DUMMIES - you and them should make excellent company. At least in company of Dummies you are less likely to give the impression of someone out of thier depth. BTW people who believein Islam are Muslims(not 'Islamics'). The serious point here is whether Islamism is usefully undertstood as something akin to fascism or something distinct. The discourse of double dutch dummies does not develop or desolve this disagreement.

I find it curious that the originally posted argument for respecting "islam" turns on "respecting" muslim war prisoners first and foremost by not allowing *women* prison guards. Even if there were no *abuses* at the prison, just the fact that there were *women* guards would be seen as offensive to this muslim. An offense which this person would demand be remedied in "respect" of islam. Question: exactly why cannot a woman be a prison guard (whose prisoners happen to be muslim)? Is this a religious idea? Thanks for any info JMAC