martillo@mit-athena.ARPA (Joaquim Martillo) (08/19/84)
Since the Muslim nations insisted on dumping on Israel at the population conference just held in Mexico, examining Islamic population control methods is worthwhile. Indonesian Muslims cut down on its population growth by wiping out the Catholic population of East Timur. If this method does not slow population growth, they fall back on massacring Chinese. Massacring Chinese is also the tried and true method used by Malaysian Muslims. Not having either indigenous Chinese or a large Catholic population, Iranian Muslims have fallen back on slaughtering Baha'is. Sudanese Arab Muslims deal with their population problems by murdering Black African Christians and pagans. Mauritanian Muslims follow almost the same practice except sometimes they are more interested in turning a profit and therefore sell their blacks to North African and Middle Eastern countries as slaves. The slaughter of Non-Muslims is a long standing and time-honored practice in Muslim nations. The Ottoman Muslims applied slaughter to Armenians. The Indian Muslims have a long history of slaughtering Hindus and other ethnic groups in India. Egyptian Muslims used to practice Copt-slaughter although nowadays Copts complain more about kidnapping and rape of Coptic women. Since the early 1700's until the founding of Israel Muslim Arabs and Persians reduced the Jewish fraction of the population of their lands from almost 10% to a little less than 3% mostly via persecution and massacre (sometimes they used expulsion instead). Population control is very easy if your religion designates some fraction of the population lower beings in the order of creation who therefore have no guaranteed right to life within your nation. Yaqim Martillo An Equal Opportunity Offender Note to Allen? --> Could you please mail your pillars request to me again, I have misplaced it during my jobs change.
anthro@ut-ngp.UUCP (Michael Fischer) (08/21/84)
<> Although the referenced article probably belongs in net.flame, I will comment briefly. I cannot explain away the efforts of groups of people killing other groups of people. This does seem to happen with great regularity, whatever the basis of group formation. To attribute special blame to Islam is unfair, especially in the light of who else 'dumped' on Israel at the conference. The entire membership except Israel and the U.S.A. The range and blend of national and local groups named happen to designate themselves as Muslim, but there are great differences between them. With respect to the cultural and sociological forces that lead to killing, groups will, if unrestrained, engage with any different group. Indeed, using religious labels, we find Muslims killing Muslims with great regularity (the mentioned Chinese are for the most part Muslim). I will agree that the cultures spreading from Greece to SE Asia are violent from our perspective, but in most instances this is due to the weak societal bonds and control beyond relatively small groups. That is, they are hard to control. Certainly these groups are not all Muslim. I cannot personally condone the killing, but I cannot condone the attribution of religon as the cause. Religion is just another (though powerful) basis of group formation, but it is the group dynamics that are responcible for action, whatever the justification. Sorry this short note grew. Michael Fischer anthro@utngp
ab3@pucc-h (Rich Kulawiec) (08/22/84)
Is there a point to this, or what?
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---Rsk
UUCP: { decvax, icalqa, ihnp4, inuxc, sequent, uiucdcs } !pur-ee!rsk
{ decwrl, hplabs, icase, psuvax1, siemens, ucbvax } !purdue!rsk
It's better to burn out, than to fade away...faustus@ucbvax.UUCP (Wayne Christopher) (08/23/84)
Sorry, but if you look back through history, you will find a great deal of senseless violence being done in the name of religion. I'm not going to argue whether one religous system is more prone to causing violent behavior than another, but at least the two major religions of the world today, Christianity and Islam, have been the cause of too many wars, and have been too successful at exciting hatred among their adherents to let one claim that they are just another way of forming different groups (which, being different, tend to come into conflict a lot). Wayne
martillo@mit-athena.ARPA (Joaquim Martillo) (08/28/84)
I do not have the time to comment on most of the silliness of Fisher's reply but I would like to correct a major factual error. Almost none of the Chinese who live in Malaysia, Indonesia, or Singapur for that matter are Muslim. The Chinese of these countries are Han are practice a mixture of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism. There are Chinese-speaking Muslims but they live in North-Western China and are ethnically distinct being partially of Turkic background. They are the Hui. I know that Hui like any other Muslims who come to Malaysia are officially designated as Malays and are subjected to none of the official discrimination to which non-Muslims are subjected.