around 9/11 noone could get it right. Osama, Usama, Esama, Asama, Barack Obama, Oma Desala... pick one!
Hrmm... Well, the FBI's wanted poster uses Usama, as does Al Jazeera. The BBC used to use that form but recent articles are now saying Osama. Either way, it's just a matter of transliteration.
Languages using other scripts than the Latin often have differing forms at differing times and places. Look at the argument over Chinese transliteration: Beijing is now pushing Pinyin and the Taiwanese are sticking with Wade-Giles (
e.g.: Mao Zedong vs. Mao Tse-tung; Teibei vs. Taipei, Nanjing vs. Nanking,
etc.). And Russian studies still has no consensus, with folks like me preferring (
e.g.) Trotskii and others using Trotsky; and then there's the debate over Anglicization: is it Peter or Pyotr?
You can see this gets really annoying at times.
Anyroad... I'll try just to use 'bin Laden' if that makes ye happier. But if I use the full name, habit is likely to drop me into the occasional 'Usama'...
Jews worship Jehovah/Yahweh/etc and not really Allah like the Islamists claim. Since Allah to them is the one true God, then everyone must worship him or be destroyed.
Christians and Jews usually disagree, but as far as
Islam is concerned, Allah
is the same G-d first worshipped by the Jews and then by the Christians. The Qur'an is meaningless if this is not the case, as the entire justification for it depends upon the link to Abraham,
etc. Jews are considered wayward but are not condemned by Allah. Are you going to ignore the fact that non-Muslims have lived in Muslim lands, without trouble, for over a millennium?
There is much more. Very obvious that the Quran doesn't like Jews or Christians. Unfortunately there is a lot more where that came from regarding both religions in relation to Islam.
As for your string of out-of-context quotes, I will prepare a more suitable response another day, when I have time to sit down with the original sources. Suffice it for now to say that I reject your interpretation of Islamic law, and your dismissal of historical relations between Muslims and non-Muslims. This is the kind of pig-ignorant reading of the Qur'an that calls to mind that Westboro Baptist son-of-a-bitch and his obscene "god-hates-fags" movement...
More than 'permitting'. The US is essentially WHY Israel
has the military might that it does. Indeed, why Israel
survives. We could halt just about any action they take.
They have no other allies, really.
Agreed that the US was more complicit than permissive in the Lebanon campaign, but Israel is not always perfectly reliable and has frequently pursued foreign policy objectives at cross-purposes with America's. It is tempting at times to make a reductive assessment of the American military relationship with Israel, but it's not entirely fair to the facts.
Ha. Does that include them torpedoing our ships?
Presumably that was an accident.
It was, yeah, but the IDF
would fire on American troops
if they stood in the way of an important Israeli objective, and they have said so before. Israel's leadership have committed themselves to acting solely in their perceived national interest, for the sake of their national survival, and they don't much give a hoot if they piss people off along the way.
