Well, Richard, I wish you were totally wrong, but you aren't. Bin Laden is an extremist, and relatively few muslems would support him whole heartedly. But it remains a fact that a very, very large number of Muslems worldwide, even converts in the West, thought the actions on Sept 11 were a well-deserved lesson for the Americans. I have seen the same sort of comments from certain leftists, even here in Norway, which has been one of the closest allies of the US after WWII.
Islam is an extremely legalistic religion. It has no separation of church and state (even though most Islamic states have had this separation for practical reasons). It does set the group over the individual. ExJWs will mostly see big warning flags here. Islam is also a religion with a very violent past (which is not unique of course), and it's not hard to find justification for all sorts of violent atrocities in its holy writings.
Naturally, you can find all sorts of people among the world's around one billion Muslems. Generalizations will have a low precision. That said, Islam has been demonmstrated to be an abusive and oppressive religion, and today it's a relic from the Dark Ages that liberal Muslems will have a hard time renewing.
Some recent online articles I recommend for some background:
Salon's interview with Karen Armstrong on http://www.salon.com/books/int/2001/10/22/armstrong/index.html
Slate magazine's "Islam: A Peaceful Religion?", on http://slate.msn.com/Gist/01-10-18/Gist.asp
- Jan
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"Doctor how can you diagnose someone with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and then act like I had some choice about barging in here right now?" -- As Good As It Gets