Originally posted by finnegan
Xenophobia - hatred of foreigners - is a common characteristic among people whose land has for too long been interfered with by foreigners and who feel their values are being insulted and despised. Irish people had a similar reaction to the English at one time not so far back. Pastor Jones is tolerated in his country and has the freedom to be as offensive ...[text shortened]... to doctors performing abortions to Democrat politicians? Or is the US more civilized than that?
I had a thread a while back titled "1000 years".
I was trying to get at the point that that some people, (actually whole gorups), act like people did a thousand years ago. Fearful of that which is different from their beliefs, (simply put).
Juxtaposed to this are the more "enlightened" people/groups that want to look on the positive side of all religons and the cultural traditions that sometimes hold back whole societies.
My way is to take the positive from all religons/ faiths/humanitarian outlooks and discard the negative stuff.
The Islamophobia displayed by a few posters, (and silently supported by some others, no doubt), may as well be the watered down views of the barbaric christians AND islamists from a 1000 years ago.
It is a big bridge to cross. But I reckon there is a critical mass in collective thinking that will turn the tables and bring everyone upto speed of where our world is at at the moment.
We need unification more than ever, it's a shame that in many societies it takes a natural disaster (for example), to bring the people together and forget about their religous differences and go back to their innate, innocent, altruistic natures ,(like children have), and leave our cultural/religous differences behind to embrace our simlilarities, of which we have more of than differences.