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Expat wanderer

Schism vs Fitna

On the front of the Friday Kuwait Times (kind of the weekly tabloid edition) there is a headline article about Saudi Blogger Raed Al Saeed, who made a 6 minute video picking out verses from Samuel, Numbers, Deuteronomy, etc. to illustrate horrorific illustrations from the Bible, to parallel Geert Wilder’s movie, Fitness, which picks out verses from the Qura’an to illustrate the violence of Islam.

He says” It is easy to take parts of any Holy book that are out of context and make it sound like the most inhuman book ever written. This is what Geert Wilders did to gather more supporters to his hateful ideology.”

He’s right. It’s easy to point fingers, and to create fear and hate. It’s a whole lot harder to try to build bridges of understanding and compassion, to find similarities, to find ways to respect one another, to work together, to try to build a better world, and to agree to disagree when our books take different directions.

April 11, 2008 - Posted by | Blogging, Character, Communication, Community, Cross Cultural, Locard Exchange Principal, News, Poetry/Literature, Social Issues, Spiritual

6 Comments »

  1. Fitness, hmm, sounds like a Jane Fonda Video 🙂

    Purgatory's avatar Comment by Purgatory | April 11, 2008 | Reply

  2. I saw his also in the morning paper and then saw it on CNN’s Middle East Blog and posted on it on my blog as well this morning with a link to the video (if it stays available!) The Saudi Blogger in my opinion gets to the root of the problem. Too much negativity is and has been generated taking things out of context since writing was invented and even earlier!

    Ian Butterworth's avatar Comment by Ian Butterworth | April 12, 2008 | Reply

  3. Take any piece of text out of it’s context and you end up with something that’s totally different from it’s origin…I guess that’s why Muslims find it hard to consider the Bible and Torah as actual & factual, come to think of it…

    The Aggressor's avatar Comment by The Aggressor | April 12, 2008 | Reply

  4. http://open.yale.edu/courses/religious_studies/introduction-to-the-old-testament-hebrew-bible/sessions.html

    you might like this though its not like your sunday bible study

    error's avatar Comment by error | April 12, 2008 | Reply

  5. Purg, LOL, I think we must be related like a few generations back. You sound like my cousins.

    Welcome, MisterIan. It is so much easier to nit-pick back and forth, to point fingers, to blame – and so much harder to just try to get along.

    Holy Smokes! Error AND the Aggressor – two of the most erudite commenters in the Kuwaiti blog world. I am honored. Thanks for the recommendation, Error; as you can tell, I am a little out of the box.

    intlxpatr's avatar Comment by intlxpatr | April 12, 2008 | Reply

  6. Death Threats Counter: Fitna vs. Schism
    http://muslimsagainstsharia.blogspot.com/2008/04/schism-response-to-fitna.html

    reformislam's avatar Comment by reformislam | April 20, 2008 | Reply


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