> So I had a thought, read a little and I put up a thread: "Why Islamic
> Creationism Is Superior To Christian Creationism". It was so much fun.
> I posed as a religious Muslim - using my regular screen name attached
> to a couple hundred atheist rants and snotty remarks - and started
> taking the questions on. Great stuff. The creation story in the Koran
> is, in fact, a lot better than the straight Biblical one. Apparently
> there were major revisions needed. And so I just maintained the
> superiority of it. Well the most fun was the Christians who started
> out attacking me about not believing the Bible. I told them of course
> I did, all Muslims do. But then they asked "Aha, but you don't believe
> in the Divinity of Christ!" And I said I beleived that Christ a
> prophet conceived in a miraculous act. "But," they said "you don't
> believe that Jesus is both man and God." And I said of course I didn't
> because there is only one God and to think otherwise would be
> idolatry. And then they would say "but the Bible says..." and I would
> say that I was sorry they thought that was what the Bible says, but
> that they were wrong.
Heh. :-) That sounds like fun. You should consider forwarding a link to the discussion...
> Religion is so relaxing. It's literary criticism. That's easy.
Harold Bloom wrote that religion is "the people's poetry, both good and bad."
> The West has to defeat Islamic fundamentalism - which is most of Islam
> - and we know how to do that easily. It's called Coca-Cola. Britney.
> J-Lo, Brangelina, Playboy, Porno, pop music, pop tarts, Hello Kitty
> and Halo 3. No religion can withstand it
>
> It is the call to prayer of the consumer. There is no God but Britney.
I won't write this possibility off entirely, and I very much hope you are right. But inundating, say, Pakistan with U.S.-influenced popular culture doesn't seem nearly as key to defeating Islamic fundamentalism as ending the U.S. slaughter of Muslims.
In the U.S. the Christofascists have simply created a parallel popular culture: there are Christofascist versions of rock concerts, movies, novels, television, news broadcasts, and so on. Is there something about Islam that's inherently resistant to popular culture, such that Muslim fundies wouldn't be able to create their own version of what the U.S. Christofascists have? (That's not a rhetorical question, I'm wondering).
-WD
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