You are all wonderful,

Thanks for your great support!

You are damn right! I've never seen anything as dangerous as Islam to humanity.

@Sayed.  We must be careful, however, to keep from lending support to the idiots in the hinterlands who try to amend state laws that say that their governments shall never be ruled by Shariah law.  This is of course a reduncancy, but they are not clever enough to figure that out.  We must not zero in on Islam with any particularity because to do so would aid these mindless halfwits.  I suspect this is one of the criticisms of both the Harris and Hitchens books on atheism and the three major religions, since Harris gave line-for-line jihadist passages from the Koran, while Hitchens insulted the most sacred slogan in Islam when he titled his book, in contradiction of "Allah Akbah!" God is NOT Great.  I am an apostate from Episcopalianism, generally regarded as a liberal protestant sect.  My opinion of it is that it is an enabler of all the really totally silly other religions, including born again evangelical Rupt Rapture freaks and those idiot former lawyers, the Rev. Phred Phelps and Scott Lively.  Our local church is called The Church of the Good Shepherd and I called it that until a fellow lawyer corrected me, saying, "Actually, it's the Church of the Good Cadillacs."

Thank you for the invitation. I agree that Islam is a dangerous religion and I have read parts of the Koran, but not all. What can you tell me about the Golden Age of Islam, and when/if they welcomed knowledge from any and all sources? 

Neil DeGrasse Tyson - The Islamic Golden Age: Naming Rights

@James, ofcourse you are right, we shouldn't give excuse to jihadists...radical muslims take advantage of any anti-Islamic movement to enforce their propaganda.

having said that I cannot be soft on Islam, I've seen huge amount of injustice, cruelty and atrocity from Islam, Muslims and Islamic states. Any religion dogma should be challenged. 

Organized irrationality of ANY sort should be at least suspect, because that opens Pandora's Box.  It permits OTHER irrationalities to show themselves and have an influence on the culture that surrounds it.  I still think that individual irrationality is inevitable and, by and large, harmless.  However, when you have a large group of people indulging in irrational belief and behavior, THEN looking to promote, promulgate and proselytize that behavior on the grounds that EVERYONE must believe as they believe, the line has been crossed.

@Joan.....

Islamic golden age is a misinterpretation, the correct name is " the Persian Golden Age under Islam"...Most of those achievements made by Persian scientists including ‘Muhammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī, Al-Biruni, Abu Nasr Mansur and Avicenna’  who were living under Abbasid Chaliphate and  they were forced to speak and write in Arabic.

Generally speaking, religion contradicts science. The brightest era in human history has been accomplished by putting the religion aside which we call it enlightenments.

Whose Caliphate did Mansur al-Hallaj live under?

Mansur may have been a victim of homophobia.  Read Massignon.  The reason Ahmadinejad claims there are no homosexuals in Iran is because there are a great many.

I want to know more about that period in Spanish history when all three monotheistic religions existed peacefully side by side.  Then I want to go back to the Alhambra by time machine.

Mansur Al-hallaj was a Persian Sufi and poet. He was executed by Abbasid Caliph Al-Muqtadir .

Mansur Al-Hallaj was a great man. I believe he was one of the first humanists in Islam. His famous quote is “I am The Truth”. “I” doesn’t mean Mansur himself but it represents the humanity. He was the first Muslim who challenged the absolute power of ALLAH.

@Sayed. I agree.  Massignon however points to the an'l haq (sp?) as a kind of casus belli for Mansur's arrest.  It seems some of the mullahs disliked him hanging around with what Massignon refers to as "inverts" (19th century language for gays).  Persia before Iran was a place of enormous art masterpieces and I am lucky enough to have a  piece of Persian folk art, a little bas relief with painting of a prince on horseback.  My mother gave it to me after returning from a trip to Tehran.

I am also a great fan of Sufi folk tales, e.g. those of the Mullah Nasrudin.  Very, very funny stories.

What is the status of Sufism in a country like Iran?

The late Luis Bunuel would have loved the Nasrudin stories.  They are surreal.

Probably not much different from the status of Baha'i, which is denigrated, attacked and condemned in Iran, and has been practically since its inception.

I've always said that religions who most actively attack other religions and so-called spiritual movements are the ones most likely to doubt their own.

Well, I like Sufism.

Robert Anton Wilson said all Sufis are "clowns."  He must have had Nasrudin in mind.  Nasrudin went to the bank and asked to withdraw funds; when asked for some identification, he took out his I.D. card, looked at it, and put it back into his pocket.  "Yep. That's me."

Of the one where a rich neighbor's servant answered the door and Nasrudin asked, "I'm collecting for charity, is the master home?"  The servant said, no sir.  Nasrudin said, "Then you better take his portrait out of the upstairs window."

Sufis have been widely discriminated in Mid East, however there are many branches of Sufism and It is very hard to find a right one like Al-Hallaj now.

@ryan.  Don't worry, they have so marignalized the pagan faiths, including Luciferianism, that none of the evangelical theocrats is going to round them up and build a fire of faggot kindling.  No, it is the non-believers who will be victimized this time around.  We will be blamed for 9/11 and all manner of unfortunate events because the pols are dumbing down the electorate; one version of the GOP platform even includes a push to rid schools of "critical thinking" curricula.  That way, you can blame 9/11 on the non-believers "because" they represent just the sort of thing that would give the U.S. a bad press in places like Riyadh, Tehran, and other places, apostacy being the very worst of all possible crimes wherever Shariah prevails.

We non-believers strongly go ahead. Governments always try to push their agenda; Sometimes by religion and suppression, and sometimes by freedom and democracy.  People also see the surface of any political movements. Hegel says: “What experience and history teaches us is that people and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.”

Hegel was channeling Santayana.

Probably, one and half century before Santayana in Germany

Nope.  In quantum theoretical space-time they both existed at exactly the same time.

Nice one!

http://www.atheistnexus.org/group/new-atheists hey I agree and I love your group.You might also like my group in the link above.

I got this from Atheist Humor. Thought it fit here too.

The look on that kid's face says it all!  "Man, what is up with all this kneeling shit?"