Re: Yoven's ...list

Submitted by Bader S (United Arab Emirates), Mar 3, 2006 at 08:11

The list that you give is not totally accurate. Among the countries you mention is a number of countries that have either indigineous religions as the major religion or have Christianity as the major religion. These countries are:
Benin
Cameroon
Gabon
Guinea-Bissau
Mozambique
Togo

But since the majority of the countries that you mention have Islam as the dominant religion, we need to examine your statements which appear to be biased and prejudiced:

Religious persecution: There is religious persecution in China, India, Russia, as well as in Europe and in North america. You can get a better picture from this site http://www.religioustolerance.org/rt_overv.htm . Those countries are not Muslim states and India is the oldest democracy in the world.

The worst religious persecution of the 20th Century was caused by a democratically elected political party -- the Nazi party -- who came into power in a country with Christianity as a dominant religion.

Poverty: If you examine the statistics in this list http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/eco_pop_bel_pov_lin_percap you will clearly see that poverty does not discriminate between Muslim countries or non-Muslim countries, democracies or non-democracies.

Warfare: The list at this site http://www.scaruffi.com/politics/massacre.html will demonstrate to you that warfare is not the sole domain of Islam. Infact if you look at the biggest wars of the 20th Century as listed here http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/war-list.htm non-Muslim countries are the major perpetrators and participants of wars.

Whether Iraq wants to become a "true democratic state" will not depend on Islam, Bush, or the US. It will depend on what the Iraqis themselves want. Perhaps, as a tribal society Iraq does not really want a true democratic state, have you considered that?

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