Brian:

I desperately want to agree with you. But one of the hottest topics of discussion in this area regarding Islam is, Where are the voices from the islamic Community condemning the actions of Al Qaeda, Bin Laden. Where has the Islamic Peace March been. I haven't seen them, I fear they condemn themselves by their silence. What I get to hear here in DC is the pronouncements and the denouncements of CAIR, a Washington Lobbying Group that I believe due to some legal activity we will soon discover the exact extent of the ties to the world of terrorism.

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Quoting skipnet50:

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I desperately want to agree with you. But one of the hottest topics of discussion in this area regarding Islam is, Where are the voices from the islamic Community condemning the actions of Al Qaeda, Bin Laden. Where has the Islamic Peace March been. I haven't seen them, I fear they condemn themselves by their silence. What I get to hear here in DC is the pronouncements and the denouncements of CAIR, a Washington Lobbying Group that I believe due to some legal activity we will soon discover the exact extent of the ties to the world of terrorism.

I found a few things:
Muslim Peace Fellowship
Muslim American Society
Progressive Muslim Union
Muslim Peach March
Muslim March for Peace

@ Brian:
The Wilders film has not been released yet, it is expected to be in a week's time or so. Nevertheless Dutch authorities are already bracing themselves for the expected fall-out.

Quoting JP_S:

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...But thay have outspoken opinions about Geert Wilders. Especially when Wilders wanted to forbid the Koran in The Netherlands? In our history we, the Dutch, we not allowed any other religion except the Catholic religion. So these people had to express other religions in secrecy. This eventually led to the Eighty Years' War. (Please correct me if I am wrong, because it has been some time ago I was taught this )
Do we really want to go that way? I know Wilders' allowed to express his opinion, but when his movie leads to defacing Dutch embassies or destruction, just send the bill to Wilders.
I agree to the statement that the extremist Imam's might be better of in their country of origin and shouldn't be allowed to enter the country ever.

The 80 years' war (1568-1648) was initially/primarily over taxes. And taxes vs. representation, as the low countries had become part of the Habsburg empire = the kingdom of Spain. The king had centralised government to Madrid and we weren't liking it.

Religion was initially secundary, but protestantism had just emerged as a people's revolt against the catholic church. Clergy and aristocracy were very much dividing the wealth among themselves. When the Spanish king tried to enforce his rule and get the tax revenues, he obliged the clergy in fighting protestantism as well, because the clergy was the official mind control on the people. Renaissance or not, Europe was feudal then.
Once the war was won, it did give protestantism the excuse to ban catholic clergy, which became a 3 century absence lasting until mid 19th century.

So much for the requested correction.

Wilders is just very much playing into the fears of people, being afraid of immigrants so voluminously visible (mosques, head scarves, other ways of dressing...) in our big cities. His true politics are otherwise just very much right wing, certainly economically. But you don't hear about that. It is not a vote winner.

His idea of banning the Koran is IMO a thing to make it all tangible. And get media attention -- he is a politician who needs votes. Al Qaida just helped him a lot fueling fears, as did our political middle and left by being pc and ignoring the issues people felt about massive immigration.

So, how is it going about the hopefuls for being the president of the USA  ?

..[T]he government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like the state governments, whose powers are more general. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government."
--James Madison

"Were we directed from Washington when to sow, and when to reap, we should soon want bread."
-- Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography, 1821

"Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer."
-- Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776

"To be prepared for war, is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace."
-- George Washington, First Annual Message, January 8, 1790

" I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it."
-- Benjamin Franklin, On the Price of Corn and Management of the Poor, November 1776

"The majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a crime, abuses its strength, and by acting on the law of the strongest breaks up the foundations of society."
-- Thomas Jefferson
Now isn't that interesting......

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Quoting JP_S:

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Mosques which preach fundementalism against the west or certain groups of people shouldn't be closed but put under surveillance and deport the imam.
I guess this is very right wing, but these people can't handle their freedom and abuse it.

That's exactly what our governement did recently and we have a repution to be very tolerant. The Iman was before the order of expulsion at a lot of manifestation against the west, ask for the introduction of the "Sharia" in our civil law and he takes all the way he could to cause trouble. In fact he is almost responsible for a little social crisis against everything different of our tradition here last year, he made us (the French Canadian) looks like a bunch of racist what we aren't (just ask to every immigrant who come here).

But, he had forgot to tell to the immigration that he had a criminal record in France. So, you're not welcome anymore you don't lie when you ask for the refugee status in Canada.

It was funny to see him crying on the news for a week, but if you want to stay and you are affraid to be torture in your country of origin you don't cause any trouble (it seems logic to me)

Quoting FUBAR:

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We are also just and fair.  If the Canadian government tried to deport him just because of his leanings, there would have been an outcry from both the populace and media.

Which, IMO, is one of the major problems western culture and civilization is facing regarding the integration of foreign traditions, cultures, religion and people of different cultural background and faith into our midst:

Where do you draw the line regarding acceptable behavior and intolerable misconduct?

IMO, whoever wants to go to another country, for whatever reason, has better make damn sure they're willing to adapt to the spoken language, the traditions and culture present in said country. If you don't like it, go someplace else, the world's big enough to find something more acceptable I'm sure.

Demanding such behavior from immigrants, however, usually results in those voicing that demand to be put into the right wing fraction. Since poeple tend to regard themselves as tolerant and open minded, they don't like that assumption being applied, leading to - sometimes ridiculous and desperate - attemtpts to justify a certain POV in ways it can't be done, because saying it as it really is and as you believe is going to make you look bad in the eyes of a certan group of others.

Since this is a commonly known phenomenom, this situation is exploited by those elements from diffenent cultural background that don't want to adapt and integrate at all, for whatever reasons, and have a different - and sometimes dangerous - agenda of their own.

Putting tolerance and integration and the well being of immigrants (legal and illegal alike) - as important values as these are for a continuously prospering life of mankind in general - above a countries own and unique traditions, beliefs, values and faith is a grave mistake, as it weakens the possibility of a country to take action against intolerable elements of society that don't follow the laws and regulations and are placing themselves outside the foundation the country in question was built upon.

Well said, unfortunately i the era of PC, people are refusing to integrate. Instead, they are trying to force their culture and or religion, even sometimes politics on their adopted home. If that home does not follow their wishes then they charge racism, discrimination, etc. My personal opinion is that if you want to gom to another country to create North Mexico, Western Iran or whatever, then either don't go to that country, STAY where you are or GO BACK where you came from. You LEFT your culture and your society for whatever reason, don't try and recreate it somewhere else.

Note to my French friends, please WAKE UP before it is too late,and too some extent my other Euro friends as well, you have been INVADED by forces hostile to your rich and storied culture. Shereia Law INDEED.

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