By: Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis
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What happens these days in today’s world demonstrates very well that Muslims and Christians have been caught victims of an unnecessary and malicious plan.

At the other end, Christians in Europe and America have been misled — through an incessant brainwash orchestrated by their mass media, politicians and intellectuals — and believe that the average Muslim has been radicalized, and is now ready for a Jihad against Christianity and the West.

This is all wrong. In fact, it is a false debate where both clashing parts have a distorted perception of the “other”, and of themselves. What is at stake involves both religions, all the religions of the world, and the world peace.

What Muslims failed to understand: the West is not Christian.

Muslims seem to forget that the Western countries are not Christian countries; they are merely countries with Christian populations, but the principles and the ideas of Christianity have been systematically disrespected and marginalized there. These countries were Christian indeed in the past, but confusing 15th century Europe with today’s Anti-Christian Europe is sheer proof of ignorance.

The Muslims confuse Medieval, Christian Europe’s Anti-Islamic stance with today’s Europe’s Anti-Islamic delirium. Terrible mistake with calamitous consequences!

Never ever has a Modern Muslim undertaken a critical examination of Europe’ identity; even worse, not a single Muslim today imagines as possible for him to undertake a research based let’s say on Ibn Khaldoun’s systematic investigative approach. Muslim historians have been accustomed with Western analytical methods in their explorations and investigations, thus enslaving themselves to a system that is not theirs, and to conclusions that are genuinely wrong for a Muslim to draw.

Simple observation and criticism would however be enough for a Muslim to understand that all the Christian values, principles and concepts on which the Christian Western societies were based have totally disappeared. These values, principles and concepts may perhaps be shared by many average people in the West, but they ceased to be the axis around which evolve the Western societies, their administrations and policy-making.

In fact, the values, principles and concepts that form the essence of today’s Western ruling class mindset, policy making and Weltanschauung are at the very antipodes of Christianity. Materialism, consumerism, immoral behaviour, corruption, relativism, nihilism, conformism, conventionalism, formalism, evolutionism and individualism prevail along with a foolish inclination for technological innovation, luxurious leisure, debauchery, incommensurable selfishness and overwhelming hypocrisy.

The driving force that eliminated Christianity brought forth the aforementioned, purely Anti-Christian situation. All this is due to the subversive tactics of Free Masonry, an ages-old society that in the process of its opposition to Vatican and to the official Christianity was transformed from inside and turned to an apostate guild. The subversive tactics undertaken by the Apostate Freemasonic Lodge in its search for prevalence condemned it to apostasy. Without deeply understanding these developments, no one can understand the evolution of the Western societies, and the phenomena of colonization (as practiced mainly by France and England) and globalization (as practiced mainly by America).

This subversion makes it possible that even in an institution that has been traditionally opposed to Freemasonry, like Vatican, one can possibly find members of the organization — and at times its head — who are Freemasons and act subversively in order to control and guide at will the organization in question.

This is precisely what happens with Vatican today; the present pope has been repeatedly accused by important Christian organizations as being a Freemason, which is absolutely incompatible with the quality of a Christian, and of a Muslim as well (http://www.virgo-maria.org/#). This imposes differentiation policies, and if they are not introduced, Muslims will simply fail in their approach to Europe, America and the Western world.

What Christians failed to understand: the East is not Islamic.

Similarly, Christians seem to forget that the Eastern countries are not Islamic / Muslim countries; they are countries with Muslim populations but the principles and the ideas of Islam have been systematically disrespected and marginalized at the level of the ruling elites, their mindset, lifestyle, behavioural system, administrative choices and policies, and more particularly their foreign policy making. These countries were Muslim indeed, but confusing 16th century Ottoman Empire with today’s pseudo-Muslim states is sheer proof of ignorance.

The Christians confuse Islamic Ages’ Islamic expansion at the detriment of Christianity with today’s Islamic World’s Anti-Western rhetoric. Terrible mistake with calamitous consequences!

Even worse, few Christians realize in the West that the same forces that demolished systematically the Christian values for the past three centuries, principles and concepts are those who shaped and imposed an interpretative method of the Oriental civilizations (Islamic included), which was adjusted to their sociopolitical, economic and global interests, and therefore is absolutely untrue.

Christians in the West failed to understand that one of the nefarious counterparts of Darwinism and evolutionism was the Orientalist doctrine of Islamology, which was geared to both, prevent Westerners from knowing the true Islam and let Muslim scholars persist on their obsolete analyses and approaches that further drag them to irrevocable ignorance and permanent impotence.

Christians in the West failed to understand that the inventors of the fallacious term “Arab — Muslim civilization” (civilisation arabo-musulmane) are identical with the promoters of the gay marriages in the West; even worse, real Catholic and Orthodox Christians failed to overtly accuse of apostasy the pseudo-Christian Evangelical puppets of the Freemasons who are those who promote both, the Zionisation of Christianity and the Anti-Islamic hysteria that deepens the unnecessary chasm between Christians and Muslims.

Even worse, never ever has a Modern Christian undertaken a critical examination of the Islamic World’s identity, other than the Islamological Orientalist fallacy of the Freemasons; even worse, not a single Christian today imagines as possible for him to undertake a research based on let’s say Theophanes’, George Syncellus’, Michel Psellos’ or John Damascenus’ theoretical approaches. Christian Western historians have been accustomed to use Freemasonic Orientalist analytical methods in their explorations and investigations, thus enslaving themselves to a system that is not theirs, and to conclusions that are genuinely wrong for a Christian to draw.

Simple observation and criticism would however be enough for a Christian to understand that all the Islamic values, principles and concepts on which the Islamic societies were traditionally based have by now disappeared. These values, principles and concepts may perhaps be shared by average people in many Muslim countries, but they ceased to be the axis around which the Muslim societies, their administrations and policy-making evolve.

In fact, the values, principles and concepts that form the essence of the Modern Muslim ruling classes mindset, policy making and Weltanschauung are at the very antipodes of genuine, traditional Islam. Filthy liars and bogus sheikhs ready to justify anything are therefore hired in the Islamic World’s leading mosques and universities in order to serve their criminal and pseudo-Islamic presidents, tyrants, emirs and bogus-kings, and they lecture the besotted masses that one Muslim can play football, spend his holidays in 5 stars hotels, organize Marketing campaigns for Coca Cola and Mc Donald’s, and go shopping in the malls.

Islam is thus reduced to a meaningless pseudo-prayer and the besotted pseudo-Muslim masses are told that this is enough to ensure good judgment in the Hereafter. At the same time, due to the advanced Westernization of the pseudo-Muslim societies, materialism, consumerism, immoral behaviour, corruption, relativism, nihilism, conformism, conventionalism, formalism, evolutionism and individualism prevail among pseudo-Muslims along with a foolish inclination for technological innovation, luxurious leisure, debauchery, incommensurable selfishness and overwhelming hypocrisy.

In fact, Islam had fallen into desuetude and coma before Napoleon arrived in Egypt, and even before the English set foot in India. The decadence was due to the rise in force of several negative and nefarious elements and doctrines that at first had been rejected and castigated; however, quite unfortunately, these doctrines managed to survive, expand and even give birth to lower and more degraded doctrinal systems. From Ahmed Ibn Hanbal to Ibn Taimiya and thence to Abdel Wahhab, a grave deterioration of thought, intellect, mental and intellectual processes, and a dramatic degradation and elimination of wisdom, knowledge, art, research and behaviour turned the Islamic civilization into a filthy realm of fanaticism, ignorance, hatred, negativism, and barbarism. This became the realm where tolerance is customarily shown for every attempt of lowering, vulgarizing and bestializing the human being. When Napoleon arrived in Egypt, the Islamic civilization — as assimilated, assessed, expanded and elevated by Masters of the World Thought like Tabari, Khwarismi, Ferdowsi, Ibn Sina, Qurtubi, Mohyieldin Ibn Arabi, Ibn Hazm, Ibn Rushd and many others — simply did not exist anymore.

The early Orientalists, who were all European Freemasons and, under the pretext of search and exploration, did their best to offer false interpretations of the historical phenomena (not only those pertaining to the Islamic Ages), noticed the aforementioned disastrous fall of the Islamic world, and to capitalize on their early colonial success, they triggered among the Muslim societies a series of socioeconomic, political and intellectual, pre-calculated reactions that pushed the colonized Muslim societies further deeper in the bottom. Through this, the Freemasonic Orientalist academia of England and France managed to control and exploit the Muslim societies in a way that made them stronger back home.

Robbing Muslims’ Wealth to Destroy Christianity: Typically Freemasonic

This is the truth that obliges today Christians and Muslims to merge against their common enemy: the wealth extracted from occupied Muslim lands was indeed used by the Freemasonic socioeconomic and political establishment of the West in order to finance the destruction of Christianity in the West.

The driving force that perpetuated Islam’s putrefaction is identical with those who destroyed the Christian identity of the West, and plunged the Western societies into endless crimes, such as abortion, homosexual marriages, and generalized corruption. The same subversive tactics applied by the criminal Freemasonic establishment in the Islamic World damaged the Christians in the West, although the colonial powers’ victories in Africa, the Middle East, the Balkans and South Asia were effectively depicted as a success for the entire Christianity.

But what sort of Pyrrhic victory is it for the true Christians of the West the fact of an African becoming Christian, if this person’s children, living in America, carry out a totally Anti-Christian life full of materialism, sexualism, amoral behaviour, consumerism, and oblivion of all faiths?

As a matter of fact, the Ottoman Oil stolen by France, England and the US through the illegal occupation of the Ottoman territories (Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Emirates and Oman) was not “good” for the Christians in the West. It merely helped elect Freemasonic popes in the 50s, the 60s, the 70s, and the 2000s.

That is why Christian organizations should form a great platform with Muslims who are able to carry out self-criticism and understand that today’s Muslim fanatics trying to radicalize the Muslim societies and escalate the Christian — Muslim clash are merely playing into the Freemasonic game of Islam’s ultimate disaster and annihilation.

Note — Picture: “Cardinal” O’Connor (an intimate friend of anti-pope John Paul 2) Pictured Smiling with Two Full Aproned Freemasons. From: http://www.todayscatholicworld.com/nov05tcw.htm

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   By: Prof. Mahfuz Chowdhury
America has often fought the wrong war, at the wrong time, and against the wrong people. The wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and now Afghanistan would seem to fall into such categories. Although, apart from the human tragedy, the enormous economic fallout of the Vietnam War might be imagined, the full outcome of the Iraq war must be awaited as it is not over yet. However, the debate on the launch of the Afghan war has only begun and it would take many more years to assess the damage, assuming the war is not going to end anytime soon. This war is also affecting neighboring Pakistan and creating a great controversy in terms of its economic cost and more importantly about whether it is winnable. Opinions vary, but those who doubt that the war could be won seem to be gaining ground.

Here are some of their arguments. Afghanistan was such a sectarian and unmanageable country that super powers like the Soviets and earlier the British failed to control it. This country has not changed much since those days. The enemy that America is fighting in Afghanistan is elusive and the situation on the battleground itself is very erratic and unpredictable. The daily news of horrors such as the recent killings of the chief CIA operative including 6 other colleagues in Afghanistan, and the unprecedented and ever increasing human carnage in neighboring Pakistan should provide some important clues. In fact, the escalating conflict and mayhem in Pakistan, a nuclear country, is now adding to the genuine fear that its nuclear weapons are not safe in the hands of its government.

Is America’s goal to contain terrorism or to oppose organized Islamic fundamentalism in Afghanistan? If the fight is to contain fundamentalism, winning this war in Afghanistan alone is not likely to achieve it. The skeptics should only look at the unrelenting and vicious terrorist activities as well as the outright defiance that is spreading not only in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but also in Yemen, Somalia, Iran, Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq and many other countries, including America itself. (Note the recent shooting rampage by an American army psychiatrist in Fort Hood, Texas, that claimed 13 lives plus many more injuries). Clearly, there are innumerable signs that the conflict is spreading. Indeed, after the failed 2009 Christmas Day bombing plot on a flight from Amsterdam, the U.S. government imposed intense screening of passengers at airports worldwide from 14 terror suspect nations. America had thought that it had found a willing partner in the Yemeni government that would support the deployment of American troops to fight the rising Islamic militants there. But it has been reported that the government of Yemen has rebuffed the idea for fear of losing popular support.

Religious fundamentalism is nothing new as it has been in existence since the birth of religion itself. The main theme of every religion was supposed to guide people to lead a noble life. Yet human society has experienced enormous oppression, suppression, violence, crime, brutality, fatality, and war in the name of religion. No religion is immune from the appeal of fundamentalism, and fundamentalist practices are still very much in existence, though subtly in some cases and violently in others. Without a doubt, Muslims have had their share of religious violence, and the present situation is no different. But to blame only Muslims for what is happening now would be morally wrong. How could one justify what Jews are doing to Muslims in the Middle East? Does not anyone see how Israel is provoking the Muslims?

Every heinous act of terrorism is a serious crime, and it must never be condoned under any circumstance, be it individual or collective. But, instead of looking or treating every terrorist act equally, if society condones or overlooks one and tries to punish the other, it only intensifies violence. This is precisely what seems to be the case with Islamic fundamentalist terrorism.

Islam is a world religion with a great following, and it certainly deserves respect. Yet the Muslim community always felt that they were being treated unjustly by the affluent west. The Arab-Israeli conflict has kept that feeling alive and very intense. The Muslims believe that the creation of Israel and the continued atrocities that are being perpetrated by Israel is nothing but a big conspiracy by the west to suppress them. They also believe that the Iraq and Afghan wars initiated by the United States are all part of the same conspiracy. And the religious fundamentalists are taking full advantage of public sentiment to create havoc and spread terrorism everywhere.

America claims itself to be the promoter of human rights and preaches self determination of all people. But it utterly fails to help the Palestinian cause. Why? The most difficult and painful situation for Muslims and other rational people, is to see and accept the sufferings of their fellow brethren in Palestine. The Muslims squarely blame America for the present tragedy because of its unequivocal support of Israel. After many years of armed struggle, the Palestinians have agreed to live peacefully with Israel in the internationally recognized pre 1967 border of Palestine. But Israel steadfastly refuses to compromise and continues to thumb its nose against world opinion by brutally suppressing the Palestinians, using American weaponry.

The best case for the Palestinians has probably been made by none other than the former U.S. President and a Nobel laureate Jimmy Carter, who argues in his book “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid” that Israel’s continued control and colonization of Palestinian land have been the primary obstacles to a comprehensive peace agreement in the Middle East. The Israeli blockade of Gaza’s 1.5 million residents for the past year?as a collective punishment, which has drawn many international condemnations including allegations of war crimes?is a glaring example of actions that openly provoke Muslims to resent America, which refuses to intervene and stop such Israeli atrocities.

There are other issues of contention for Muslims. America supports Saudi Arabia, an autocratic country with no democratic rights, while it refuses to recognize the democratically elected Palestinian representatives of Hamas in Gaza. By the way, America along with Israel once supported the Hamas in Gaza as a counter to the Fatah movement. On the other hand, many believe that Saudi Arabia is sponsoring fundamentalism by providing financial help to religious schools in Pakistan and other Muslim countries.

Additionally, America went to war in Iraq under false pretexts and different agendas, though it now claims that the purpose was to save the Iraqis from the brutality of Saddam Hussein. Muslims believe that the main purpose for invading Iraq was to protect America’s oil supply. And they have plenty of facts to justify their claim that America is driven by its economic greed. They look at the situation in Darfur, Congo, Myanmar and other countries where America failed to prevent atrocities or promote democratic rights.

Muslims even question the American policy of allowing Israel to hide its nuclear weapons and maintaining its own nuclear stockpile, while it rallies its western allies to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. Ironically, America’s success against Iran would depend entirely on the co-operation of China and Russia, which might not be forthcoming as they too have their own world agendas to pursue.

The above exemplifies the ways that America has alienated Muslims over the years. Now the new generation of educated Muslims is getting impatient with American prejudices, and is effectively using the internet to communicate with and receive feedback from each other. The fundamentalists are successfully indoctrinating these young people to resort to violent tactics in the name of “Jihad“, a religious word for martyrdom. America and the rest of the world have already witnessed some of their brutal suicidal acts during and since 9/11. If the core issues are not addressed, even if America wins the war in Afghanistan, it might not dampen the spirit of young Muslims around the world to pursue their resistance. American suppression is likely to embolden the fundamentalists to embrace new or more dangerous tactics of terrorism. Violence begets violence, and it would be impossible for America to monitor, invade, occupy or control every Muslim militant country in the world.

Although it is the sole remaining super power, America seems to be losing its grip on its economic power. The country has yet to recover from the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. The unemployment rate is hovering around 10 per cent, the federal debt has already surpassed $7.5 trillion, and the federal budget deficit was $1.4 trillion in fiscal year 2009. There are other emerging economic powers now, who are preparing to compete and check American hegemony in the world. In fact, America can no longer continue to impose its will on the world community. Nor can it suppress Islamic fundamentalism or its spread by its military power alone. It clearly needs to reassess its overall foreign policies if it wishes to rein in the fundamentalists and remain an important international player.

The rise of Islamic fundamentalism with its current ferocity is a problem for the Muslim populace as well. But they will be reluctant to join the fight with true conviction unless America is willing to change its attitude towards Muslims and correct its past mistakes. A speedy and just settlement of the Palestinian crisis would be a good start. It should then be followed by a quick withdrawal of American troops from Iraq and a winding down of the Afghan war as fast as possible. Unless America plays its cards right, the consequence of its military exercise in Afghanistan will be just as futile as the war in Vietnam.

About The Author: Professor Mahfuz R. Chowdhury teaches Economics at C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University, New York, USA. He has published articles on various issues of Bangladesh and other economic issues, which are posted on numerous web sites. He has wide ranging experience in international business and commerce, and has written on failure of communism & problem with developing countries. His book, “Economic Exploitation of Bangladesh“, addresses the economics of developing countries, using Bangladesh as a case study. | More Articles By Mahfuz R. Chowdhury |

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   Columnist – John Sammon
Maybe Obama can undo the Bush Cheney years. I doubt he can on his own.

The Founding Fathers who talked about freedom and designing an egalitarian state were themselves elitist, racist and corporate (Alexander Hamilton called the public an ass). America has not lived up to its promise, for it was a promise only made, not intended to be kept. Basically, the system has been and still to this day is founded on the principle, the (white) cream, the privileged elite among us, rises to the top.

Obama remains something of an anomaly. Elected by a popular vote, how long he remains in office and is viewed with favor depends on the degree to which he attempts to change the corporate influence on American life and the unquestioning obedience to it of the American people.

Here are 10 reasons why:

1.   Look at the numerous wars we’ve fought or instigated, always in the name of righteousness. Look at the list of our opponents. A few were evil, corporate and powerful, for example, Imperial Japan, and Nazi Germany, developing dictatorial states who attempted to copy the imperialism of England and the United States. Remember, Japan was a hermit kingdom that simply wanted to be left alone until we forced her to open her doors for exploitation and she began to modernize at a rapid rate. But many wars have been dynastic in nature, colonial, undertaken against impoverished Third World nations for natural resources, from the Philippines in 1900 to gain a colony in Asia, to Iraq, deposing a dictator we had equipped and encouraged because he wouldn’t act like a proper puppet, and we wanted his oil.

2.   Capitol Hill is ruled by corporate lobbyists, whose loyalty is not to the country, but to their respective corporations and the profit margins they gain by not only exploiting you as a customer, artificially jacking up the price of oil, or skyrocketing the price of medicines, or developing overseas markets to take advantage of cheap or slave labor even if it means eroding jobs here at home and promoting unethical, obscene regimes abroad. China for example. Thus, it’s not the government and the people of the United States. It’s the government, the lobbyists and the people in order of influence, with the people a distant third. Dynastic and monetary power rules.

3.   The American people, many of them, it sounds harsh to say, are fairly stupid, and docile, fertile ground for manipulators. Many of them get their filtered news from corporate controlled television conglomerates or hate radio. Stupidity is not a matter of simply not knowing. It’s not wanting to know, not caring that you don’t know. Tuning out. Never doubting. Not reading. Not learning.

4.   THE PRESIDENT IS ABOVE THE LAW. They, the powers that be, love to say it isn’t so. But time and again it’s been proven. Nixon should have done jail time. Bush and Cheney should be prosecuted for lying America into a war over false weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Always, the reasons for not doing it are the same, it’s inconvenient, it makes us look bad, we need to move ahead. The problem with excusing wrongdoing because it was allegedly patriotically motivated is that it encourages future wrongdoing. It also creates two separate classes of accountability, us, and them.

5.   The United States is truly a Roman Empire-style colossus, stockpiling every kind of weapon imaginable, arming much of the world with these weapons, but castigating countries we don’t like for trying to acquire the same weapons.

6.   There is a developing disturbing psychological quirk only I report. American military officers and soldiers have taken to posing with the bodies of defeated foes for photos, such as the dead sons of Saddam Hussein. Or, the still-living wretches thrown into Abu Ghraib Prison, tied up and photographed often in bondage, pseudo-sexual positions. Wanting to project power by using bodies as perverse propaganda props makes me doubt the sanity of people who, like Frankenstein’s monster, have been sent out in the world to do good in our name.

7.   Our former president loved posing in uniform like Benito Mussolini, even though he was only a Vietnam-dodging, National Guard week-end warrior who skipped meetings.

8.   In the reactionary hysteria after 9-11, everybody drove around town displaying flags from car antennas in a tacky display as though they were bumper stickers. This was new. Misuse of the flag in a cheap football pep rally-like attempt to stifle dissent and to glorify solidarity for government policy is perhaps the most basic of all fascist tendencies.

9.   To a corporate democraphobe (dislikes democracy), the following rating system applies, war, good, weapons, good, profits from outrageous prices, good, spend on schools, bad, help people in need with training, bad, shared health care, bad, immigration, bad.

10.   A McCarthy-style climate of fear, of enemies, traitors, subversives, Islam, even though we love Saudi Arabia, has been promoted.

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   Columnist – John Sammon
Here is a short compilation of the outstanding features of world religions and how they have been interpreted.

Catholicism – It only makes sense that the founder of this faith, a humble, obscure first century Galilean carpenter who preached humility, otherworldliness, non-accumulation of possessions, tolerance and forbearance, would have his message taken over by acquisitive, palace-building, gold hunting aggressive clerics. The Roman Empire, corrupt, evil, on its last leg to collapse, took the religion and installed its Caesar as the new head of the church, The Pope. Jesus may have overturned the tables of the money changers, but the word ever since is go for the gold, constructing ornate, opulent city-size palaces, wearing gold robes, golden jewelry trappings, wearing crowns with rubies, emeralds, diamonds, the gold stolen from South American natives. Catholic clerics preach to the poor to not practice birth control often in the most poverty-stricken countries like Brazil that don’t have the resources to handle their mushrooming population, to the point that they have to cut down the Amazon Rain Forest to try and survive. Catholics want to out-populate other religions in the best imperialistic style of the old Roman Empire, and the expanded birth program of the more recent Nazi Germany. They have launched crusades and wars of conquest against supposed heathens, but also against other Christians. Pillage, plunder, murder, in the name of Jesus. Nuns come in the middle of the night, tie you up and whip you because you wet the bed. Priests molest young boys. What’s all this have to do with Jesus?

Judaism – The Jews rightly believe they’re the oldest, but like other religions, wrongly believe that they’re also the best, as if there is such a thing as a best religion. More clannish than some other religions, that means they don’t want you to marry their daughter if you’re not also Jewish. They believe in the more cruel, austere Old Testament minus Jesus, which tends to recommend a lot of smiting (killing). Everyone who doesn’t believe gets smited, whether it’s Canaanites, or Philistines, or the Palestinians of today. If they don’t like you, they really like to smite you. Like other religions, this religion has many curious symbolic pagan-like acts, such as painting animal blood over doorways at Passover, or stomping glass cups at weddings, refusing pork, wearing little beanies that don’t provide shade from the sun, and getting obsessive over candle holders. Because over the centuries they were often mistreated by Catholics, they developed a sense of humor when they’re not smiting, and provided many fine comics and entertainers.

Islam – A dry desert air religion. More obsessive with direction than other religions, everybody has to bow and point their head toward Mecca, as if something important once happened in this sleepy little desert spice-trade caravan town. Just as imperialistic as other religions, Islamists tend to be humorless, unlike the Jews, so that when they smite you, or do a jihad on you as they like to put it, it makes you angrier than if they told a joke and smited you. Beards are big in this religion, beards and turbans. Instead of God and Jesus, or God and no Jesus, they believe in God and a prophet. They have their own Bible, the Koran. Less materialistic and gold-hungry than other religions, and not as interested in ringing bells, they nevertheless like to build tall towers, climb to the top and yell over loudspeakers. They have many sects in this religion, including the not-so-crazies, and the real way out whackos. They believe they are the un-corrupted voice of God, and have a duty to gain supremacy and conquest over non-believers, just as Christians believe they are un-corrupted and want to conquer the Islamists.

Hinduism – Sells itself as a religion that’s not a religion. Doesn’t believe in any one God, any one dogma, any one concept, or set of rites, but includes a crazy gargoyle patchwork of deities sprouting multi-heads and arms and multiple mix-mangled philosophies seemingly based on the premise that hallucinogenic inarticulacy is of and itself profound. Death and rebirth and reincarnation are important to Hindus, who believe that if you commit wrong, you come back as an unpleasant animal, and the concept of duality, the whole, and the self, and the all-knowing and the no-knowing, that nothing is real, and life is an unbroken circle, and transcendent. This is a religion for people who believe the bigger the words describing it, the more important it must be, and therefore the closer to God, words such as Satchidananda. Everything has to end with the letter A, like karma and yoga. Not for the simple-minded. Obsessed with cremation and dumping people’s ashes in already-polluted rivers, and like other religions, stresses over-population to out-represent other religions way beyond the ability of the natural resources of the Asian countries where it is often practiced.

Buddhism – Less imperialistic than many other religions, less of an emphasis on money and conquest, Buddhists believe everything means everything. Everything has symbolic importance, even little insects. Big on insects. You shouldn’t step on one. Big on symbolic trappings, but unlike other religions, not opulent, but bargain basement accoutrements, robes, prayer wheels, incense. Big on shaved heads and sitting trance-like with crossed legs, and making hum-sounds. More into the life sucks and everything after is better philosophy, Buddhists often believe in eight principles of meekness that in art represents a ships’ wheel.

Protestant – An offshoot of Catholicism, founded by a drunken lecher and butcher English king who wanted to divorce his wife.

Mormon – Would you believe in an angel named Moroni? A cult founded by a mushroom-smoking Upstate New York hillbilly with a forged set of commandments and a secret inner sanctum in Utah, and whose proponents include very clean, hardworking conservative people who look like Donny Osmond and who like other religions, recommend large families to out-populate other religions, and who send out boys wearing ties on bikes to convert heathens in exotic countries where like most other religions, they are not wanted.

Methodist, Presbyterian, and all the rest. More offshoots. Include elements of all the above.

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Eugene Robinson: Taking a cold-eyed view of international affairs is never wrong. But it’s also wrong to ignore the spectacle of an audience member, at Obama’s Cairo University speech, interrupting an American president to shout, “We love you!” You will recall that the last memorable presidential appearance in the Arab world was the news conference in Iraq at which George W. Bush dodged two shoes hurled at his head.

“I have known Islam on three continents before coming to the region where it was first revealed.” — President Obama

Obama was referring to the “generations of Muslims” in his father’s Kenyan family, his early years in Indonesia and his experience working in Chicago communities where “many found dignity and peace in their Muslim faith.” The most important word in that sentence, however, came at the end: By saying “revealed” rather than “born,” Obama was acknowledging Islam as a divinely given faith.

The fact that many Muslims now see a sympathetic figure in the White House creates new possibilities. It turns out that being Obama matters more than I thought. [ READ MORE ]

The Cairo Effect

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