Re: COMMENTS ON FREEDOM OF SPEECH


[ Follow Ups ] [ Post Followup ] [ Old Message Board ] [ Greek Connection ]

Posted by KP on January 31, 2002 at 15:13:08:

In Reply to: Re: COMMENTS ON FREEDOM OF SPEECH posted by Ibrahim on January 31, 2002 at 14:12:35:

You just don't get the point to you? How can you expect anything other than being dismissed when Islam was the religion of the oppressor of Greeks for 400 years? Although Turkey pretends to be a secular state, the movement towards Islamic fundamentalism is very strong and getting stronger, therefore again representing a contemporary threat to Greeks in Greece. You preach tolerance, well then try understanding from the other side of the Aegean - when Turkey STOPS being a threat to the nation of Greece, then Moslems within and outside of Greece will be viewed with the same equinamity that other religions are viewed with. Politics and religion have always been combined in the Mediterranean and near east - surely you who say you are educated know this. You must recognise that someone stating they are Greek and Muslim opens up a wound that goes back so many hundred years - not only to the fall of Byzantium in 1453 CE, but well before then when western Christians got it into their head to rob and violate not only Byzantium but the Holy Lands - nearly a thousand years. If you think that this post-modern 'we are all equal' stuff is going to eradicate a threat that has existed for so long, you may as well just pray for peace. Personally, believe what you will but understand that when one has a neighbour that has threatened one with death for hundreds of years, and still continues to, then anyone declaring themselves both Greek and Muslim had also better declare where there LOYALTY is - to Greece or to Islam. If it is to Greece, then peace be with them which ever prophet they believe in, if it is to Islam, then they can go to where ever they can practice their loyalty without suspicion. Let me explain it this way - calling oneself Greek and Muslim is like declaring oneself American and Marxist - this may well be possible but this would be a deeply contradictory position: How could a Marxist who lives in the US and benefits from the freedoms and capitalist economy of the US then declare they believe in the antithesis of the US political and economic system? In other words, they are benefiting from what they condemn - an hypocritical and suspicious position. Thus it is with Greek Muslims, they benefit from the openness and tolerance of a Christian democratic system, but declare they believe in what is the antithesis of it. Now do you understand the suspicion and hostility this arouses? And please please tell where in the world there exists a Muslim nation where freedom of speech is practised?


Follow Ups:



Post a Followup

Name:

E-Mail:

Subject:

Comments:

Optional Link URL:

Link Title:

Optional Image URL:


[ Follow Ups ] [ Post Followup ] [ Old Message Board ] [ Greek Connection ]