Response to Mike Taplin

Submitted by Rafa (United States), Jan 7, 2009 at 17:23

"As someone who has worked for 9 months in the Persian Gulf living amongst devout Arabs. I did not suffer in any way. The Arab hosts were invariably courteous. I did not ask them to become Christian, they did not ask me to become muslim. I respected their customs. I received respect in return. The problem of the majority of replies on these threads is that they lack any sense of truth or judgement. Terrorism has achieved it's goal if the response it receives makes you the enemy of whole Arab nations rather than the tiny percentage of that nations population that actually practise terrorism. You cannot sensibly combat terrorism by antagonising whole nations. If you believe otherwise then . ... "

I don't know how Christian you are, or whether or not you manifested external signs of your Christian belief to the Saudis. I am a Filipino Catholic who worked as an engineer in Saudi Arabia for 1 1/2 years. My fellow Filipino Catholic co-workers and I were not allowed to study the Bible, celebrate Christmas, or even put up a Christmas tree in our apartment - as these customs are considered proselytization. We were not imposing our beliefs on the Saudis (we had known already that this would be punishable by death), but we were just minding our own business.

As far as terrorism goes, it may be practiced by a very few extreme Islamists, but you cannot change the fact that all Islamists get their terrorist inspiration from the Koran that have over 100 verses that mandate violence towards the Jews, Christians, and infidels. If you think I am lying, I invite you to read Robert Spencer's "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades)".

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