Ok. I tried to stay away. I really did but I can't stand it. I'll try harder to stay away this time but I think it would do the site good to have some balance instead of constant anti-Islam/Muslim bile. The article by Nick Cohen is excellent and quite pertinent to myself because this board has made me start to sympathise and defend people I called fucktards barely a month ago.
Instead of just rehashing stuff from anti-Islamic sites why not provide a link, eg. on Cyrus, from the
British museum? Or are they too 'PC'?
I'm not justifying what happens in South Thailand but they have been Muslim since the mid-13th century and only got
annexed by Buddhist Thailand in 1902 so it's not exactly as if they just suddenly woke up one morning and decided they'd start axing peaceful Buddhists.
Lastly, I was born in Malaysia. The system is discriminatory but it is
not a system of dhimmitude. It is a racist system - bumiputera includes non-Muslims such as the orang asli, even the descendents of the
Portuguese. If you are Indian or Chinese you have far less opportunity to enter university or get a senior position in the public sector. Bumiputras also get discounted housing and a range of other benefits. It is, however, not a system of dhimitude and a lot of non-Malays (including my parents) supported it initially because they recognised that the Malays were disadvantaged. What they objected to later was that there doesn't seem to be any time frame on this affirmative action and the government (United Malays Nationalist Organisation) clique has basically become a ruling class while everyone else - poor Malays included - are still poor.
Last time I went back I saw a decline in religious nationalism from my previous holidays. It reached a peak in the early 2000s but I think more and more people are getting jack of it and the average Muslim there doesn't want a Saudi-style mutawwa putting people in lorries and driving them around the city for not fasting (as happened in Kelantan) or raiding hotels and demanding to see marriage certificates which also happened in Malaysia.
You certainly did not register on this site to stay away, did you abdalwali? You registered to post, which you do and we like your contributions. As for the question of whether this site should have some balance,
well you are the balance!
About the link about Cyrus, I don't see how the British Museum site diminishes his importance, all it says is that such cylinders were common for ancient Sassanid Kings. So? Cyrus claimed to have liberated slaves, and given his citizens equal racial and religious rights, what evidence is there that he's lying? Note even the British Museum site doesn't say that he's lying, nor does it doubt the veracity of his claims,only it says such cylinders have been issued by Kings before. And if you didn't know, King Cyrus has very good evidence in support of his claims of equal racial religious rights apart from the Cylinder, namely the fact that he's perhaps the only non Jew to be revered in the Torah, which refers to him as Koresh, and thanks him as liberator of the Jews.
Now about Thailand, I knew that bit about it being the seat of the Kingdom of Pattani, but your link will certainly enlighten those who didn't. However, that certainly doesn't justify any violence today, at least not unless the Thai Muslims were systematically discriminated against. The doors of a majority of nations which are Muslim today were opened to Islam via jihad and annexation, does it give their non Muslim minorities right to persecute others? Egypt has a Coptic minority, and Coptic Christianity preceded Islam in Egypt by seven centuries, Iran has a tiny Zoroastrian minority, Syria an Orthodox minority all these minorities don't have a right to kill the Muslim majority, do they, as their lands were once annexed? I think you yourself said that you're not justifying the Southern Thailand jihad, and I won't support these minorities if they choose to kill Muslims daily.
Finally Malaysia, yes there's a racial\ethnic bias but there's also a religious discrimination. Anyone marrying a Muslim has to convert to Islam, and the Shariah Court will judge whether anyone is allowed to convert out, after extensive re education programmes. An Indian woman Revathi Masoosai, whose parents had converted to Islam when she was a child, but who was raised by her Hindu grandmom, converted to Hinduism and married a Hindu. She was separated from her husband, her daughter Divya Darshini was taken away from her and given to her Muslim parents, and she was sent to a re education camp, where she was forced to don a hijab. Other such cases have been reported. Do a google search as my links can be biased or PC.
Strictly comparing Malaysia and its neighbour Thailand, such stuff don't happen in Thailand, where the law gives full freedom of religion.
Topic: The more the British Left Indulges in antisemitism, the more kosher I feel