hello all, i wasn't watching the list for the last month because of my
schedule. now my university is in spring break so i have
sometime.
i consider myself a muslim extropian. (i guess the time has come to start
the muslim extro movement. about a year ago somebody predicted that there
will be muslim extros etc. his prohpecy is becoming real.)
i am turkish. i don't consider myself a real excellent follower but i
believe in god, and the religion makes sense to me.
i am doing my phd in electrical engineering at usc in los angeles.
i found extropy.com about 3 years ago and i like most of the extropian
principles. in fact i can say that extropy movement and principles has made
an impact on my thinking style.
i liked all the previous emails about islam and extropianism. it is great to
be able to see all the different ideas and views.
for now i just want to comment on some points as have more time, material
and reply emails, i will try to write more.
violence in islam: i think this all comes from misinterpretation of quran
and politics. i am a secular person. i hate it when people use the religion
in politics. i think politics corrupts people and religions and it is the
reason for the existence of terrorism.
there are some verses in quran that say fight and conquer places and spread
the islam. buy everybody who has just studied islam a little bit from
objective sources know that the times were different when those verses were
revelaed. at that time there were only thousands of muslims and they were
constantly being attacked but enemies.
there is only one quran but there are many different interpretations. there
are some professors in turkey who started to interpret the quran differently
and they tried to modernize the interpretation considering the current time.
i know they are getting a lot of publicity in television. i like the new
interpretation.
they also show how islam and quran was used to make profit by people. i
don't know any english versions of their books, and in fact, i haven't read
any books on the subject yet.
there are many ways to interpret things for example you can interpret
cryogenics as reincarnation and if you read quran you'll see many references
to that.
and i don't know how many people on the list visited turkey or know things
about it other than stereotypes here are some places to visit on the web.
for starters turkish people are turks not arabs. turkish language uses roman
characters not arabic. topless sunbathing is allowed in turkey's beaches,
etc.
www.kultur.gov.tr (ministry of culture)
www.sabah.com.tr (newspaper)
www.milliyet.com (newspaper)
www.birnumara.com.tr (magazines)
www.atv.com.tr (tv channel)
www.kanald.com.tr (tv channel)
www.superonline.com (internet service provider)
zahir
http://come.to/yilmaz
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