Muslims: The Strangers in Our Midst

[Oliver]

Protesting in that hot-bed of of Wahabi-ism, Saudi Arabia? would you? I wouldn't. A seventeen year-old is waiting to have his head chopped -off for doing exactly that as I write.
Secular and religious Muslims I meet are fascinated by the US's love -affair with the Saudi monarchs. Of all the states in the region (apart from Israel, of course) S.A is the most violent and destabilising...not so much for national interests as for the personal interests for this corrupt family. So why do the US and the UK prop them up with a huge array of weapons? Only Israel gets more American tax-payers' money. And US arms, which are used not in war, in its traditional sense of armies fighting armies, but on killing civilians in Gaza and Yemen. By the way, how did the al-Nusra Front (off-shoot of AQ) in Syria get its US weapons? for whom are the US special Forces fighting ? and why?
I sometimes wonder, perhaps cynically, that the US has a sense of kinship with these fundamentalists- Islamic and Jewish- because it has so many of its own Christian ones! Of course, I know that the real enemy of US and Israeli hegemony in the region is Arab nationalism.....which is why it is always secular, not Islamic states that are destabilised and their leaders overthrown.
To put it bluntly, the Wahabi threat was encouraged by the US and its allies to serve its purposes....which is why Israel was happy to buy oil from ISIS via Turkey and an AQ off-shoot is armed by the US to topple the secular Assad.
A final point; along the same lines, Hamas was set-up and financed by Mossad in the late 1980s as a means of side-lining the secular Fatah movement. Unfortunately for the US and the Zionists, it turned out to be a national, liberation movement....and hence engaged their hostility. The same happened in Afghanistan with the Americans and the jihadists they armed to fight the Russians..... the jihadists who became the Taliban.

Fifty years of failure. And Hilary on the horizon....God help us. More wars on the way.

[Undaunted]

Oliver some of your points are well taken I suggest however, that the U.S.totally disavow any relationships it has in the area except for Isreal after all If you need a friendly to do your bidding and do it well who better? Keep the shale oil flowing (Inshallah).
The U.S. however covertly should supply small caliber arms to any party in the region after it has successfully withdrawn from the region.

[RichLB]

For those interested in terrorism, it's source and ways to defeat it, you might find the current Through the Wormhole s07e01 interesting. It is available on torrents.

[Undaunted]

The unthinkable just occurred. Normally when I see an Arab enter my lobby I make a dash for the elevator and up I go, today my timing was off and an Arab man 4Oish entered the elevator with me, when I pushed the button to my floor I was compelled to ask what floor is yours I pushed that button he then asked where I was from I told him and asked the same, he replied Bahrain then he proceeded to nicely put his arm on my shoulder and said "Hello brother' in the nicest way....When I entered my apartment I sat down and said to myself what a nice guy, there is no way I'd want any harm to come to him. Perhaps it's time to rethink the situation

[Oliver]

The road to Damascus, perhaps? I'm always being cuddled when I'm in Palestine! It's not very British, you know.

In 2004, I was in Occupied Hebron, where three hundred largely American settlers have taken over the town centre, guarded by huge numbers of soldiers, often the notoriously brutal Givati Brigade.
I was outside the home of a young father, possibly the last remaining Palestinian home in that area. The Israelis had a machine gun post on his roof, aimed not at the settlers but at us. He was weeping in my arms as he told me of how the settlers had burned to death two of his children, one of them a baby; they wanted him out of his house. And I wept, too.

A couple of days later, I was in Tel Aviv airport waiting for my flight home. I wandered past a bar filled with prosperous-looking Israeli business men and wondered if they had any idea what suffering the indigenous people of their land were undergoing. And then, with embarrassment, I realised that I wanted, actively wanted, a Palestinian fighter to enter the airport and throw a grenade into the bar. That would get their attention, I said to myself.
Ten seconds later, I was ashamed to have thought such a thing, but then I was returning to my comfortable life in London.

I recall that, in the same Hebron street, a little boy of about ten came up to me and stood in front of me, before delivering his speech, obviously learnt in school; "Welcome to Hebron," he said in faltering English, with the broadest smile you could imagine.

The thought of Hebron always brings tears to my eyes. I wish I had cuddled that boy.

[Undaunted]

Oliver, I often wonder how the Jews who have suffered so much at the hands of others can so casually bring suffering to the Palestinians while other Arab countries only use them when it is politically expedient.

[Oliver]

It is not "the Jews"; there are heroic Israelis who stand shoulder-to shoulder with Palestinians and pay a heavy cost. They are far braver than me.
And there are twenty year-old kids-girls as well as boys- who refuse conscription out of solidarity. In Hebron two years ago, I met a young Jewish Israeli girl working with the International Solidarity Movement, braving the stones that the settler kids are allowed to throw at six year-olds on their way to school, to act as a guard and a shield.
The curse is Zionism. It is an ideology based on the Old Testament that claims that all of the land was given to the Jews by God. And the Jews only.
I find it blasphemous because God is not an estate agent, parcelling-out bits of land for different tribes. I don't regard texts written and translated 3000 years ago ago to be historically accurate. Many, many Jews are anti-Zionist, including those in the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, of which I'm a member.

[Undaunted]

Oliver I can't help but think when reading posts like yours that this board is so much more than disscusing how many ashtrays were scene on any given night in a Go Go.

[Oliver]

Yes.....I appreciate your honesty and insights. I'm blessed to have discovered Thailand- and my beloved- and Palestine. Both have caused me much grief but it's been worth it!

[billyhouston]

What non-UK readers need to understand is that within the United Kingdom there is a group of people, who are typically Grauniad readers, followers of both Polly Tonybee and Jeremy Corbyn, who use their 'luvee' friends and the media, particularly the BBC, to prevent discussion of immigration and Islam. Anyone who wants to discuss immigration is termed a 'racist'... and there's nothing worse...while discussing Islam makes you islamophobic, an oxymoron if ever there was one. They attempt to disguise their anti-semitism as a hatred of the state of Israel and/or Zionism, when it's nothing of the sort. For them, anti-semitism is not just acceptable, it's mandatory.