From: Michael Wiik (mwiik@messagenet.com)
Date: Wed Sep 19 2001 - 09:50:08 MDT
Greg Burch <gregburch@gregburch.net> wrote:
> How do we, as a free people, come to terms with these facts? How do
> moderate Muslims rationalize their calls for peace and tolerance in light of
> the clear and unambiguous text of their scripture to the contrary?
Perhaps it helps to consider that this is roughly 1500 in the islamic
calendar. I think this is called the 'hegira' date? I'm not sure, years
ago I did a lot of date conversion routines for project SAMIS (Saudi
Arabian Ministry of Interior System). I also coded routines to print
entrance passes to Mecca. It's somewhat troubling to consider that maybe
a bug in this system could accidentally trigger some sort of holy war.
But I digress.
So, I consider what Xianity was like in 1500, which maybe makes me more
tolerant. Nonetheless this is the 21st century, and I remain convinced
that some, perhaps all cultures retain memes that will prove
self-destructive when faced with a modern world, in which people and
communications flow freely. Perhaps the American capitalist penchant for
taking the best of all world cultures, patenting and trademarking and
copywriting them and turning them into plastic products we can consume,
provides a sort of memetic immunity that will save us.
-Mike
-- ====================================================================== Michael Wiik Principal Messagenet Communications Research Washington DC Area Internet and WWW Consultants http://messagenet.com mwiik@messagenet.com ======================================================================
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