This only happens in African countries and it is in fact an african custom that predates Islam in that region. Also, it doesn't exist in the Arab countries where these revolts are happening. Egypt, as an example, outlawed it back in the 70's.

Change often comes all at once. While i would agree that your assessment is realistic, ultimately once societies are ripe for progressive revolution, it will occur successfully and transformatively.

You're right that Egypt has banned it. They've banned it repeatedly. They banned it in 1959. They banned it in 1997. They banned it in 2007. Still, ~95% of Egyptian women have had a female "circumcision".

Whatever I lack in historical knowledge, my knowledge of current events is spot fucking on.

I don't think Islam is "evil" or anything like that. I do, however, think that, currently, Islam is responsible for more shit than Christianity or Judaism. Yes, we all know Christianity had its bad times, but they improved. We are now waiting for Islam to improve.

Which is why I don't agree when people say that everything is relative and that we can't question other cultures or religions. American or Canadian culture is, from the point of view of someone who values individual freedoms, inherently "better" than the cultures of some Muslim-majority countries.

Seriously Christianity has improved as in so much as we care a whole lot less about it. Which is basically what needs to happen to Islam at least in the countries with those minorities, those societies can't go back on their progress on secularism, humanism and various other freedoms in order to accomodate, but sometimes they feel like they are pushed to hence Europe is having a very real problem with this integration.

I'd love it if someone could point me to any indication that that's going to happen. I have never, ever read an attitude survey from an Islamic country that has given me so much as a glimmer of hope that it will. While everyone was wetting themselves over the inspiring people power of the Egyptian revolution, I couldn't shake the feeling that the whole thing boiled down to the fact that these people's lives sucked so they were blaming Mubarak and running him out on a rail. He's a bad dude, to be sure, but such a revolution as you're talking about surely has to begin with personal responsibility and ra recognition of why what failed, failed.

Mubarak didn't fuck over Egypt half as much as backwards thinking and a billion and one bizarre pathologies did.The same can be said for so many other countries. If you see a Jew under every rock and subscribe to such nonsense as "Pepsi = Pay Every Penny, Save Israel", you're probably not going to get anywhere good in life and frankly, you don't deserve to.

It's true - the Islamic moors did not pillage and destroy anything or anyone in the name of Islam along North Africa and Iberia.

They were actually very nice blokes overall.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moors

Who are you kidding using the Crusades. The whole reason the Crusades happened was because Muslim armies conquered it from Christians in 1076. Muslims were threatening to capture Constantinople. Christians were being massacred and persecuted by the Muslim over lords who had taken over Israel and Jerusalem.

When the Muslims moved towards Constantinople in 1097 over 10,000 Christians mounted in Constantinople to take back the holy land from the oppressive Muslim's. The first Crusade managed to recapture Israel in 1099. The Crusaders butchered everyone within the walls, pretty much. However during that time period the Muslim armies did similiar acts of genocide against the Christians.

During the four crusades horrible acts of genocide and war crimes were commited by the Muslims and the Christian's alike. Muslims killed and persecuted thousands of Christians if not millions, this was the reason the Crusades happened to begin with. If Muslim armies hadn't taken over Jerusalem in the first place none of the crusades would have occured.

It was Islamist oppression that sparked the Crusades. Though I agree the Crusaders did horrible things the Muslims weren't much better.

Also during the second Crusade Muslims were allowed to visit Jerusalem and worship in their mosques. Saladin also took all those who couldn't afford a ransom into slavery when he took Jerusalem.

In the end Christianity matured. Islam did not. The Bible (New Testiment) preaches peace and love with all non-believers where as the Qur'an tells Muslims to kill infidel. Their is a drastic difference between the two faiths. Today Muslim countries force Christian's to convert or be killed and kill any Muslim's who convert to Christianity.

Islam is stuck in the dark ages (In the Middle East), the rest of the world has matured. Islam as a religion is extremely oppressive. I love my Muslim brothers but what the Muslim Governments are doing in the middle east and north africa is unnacceptable.

I realize my post makes it out that Islam is evil. It is not I have Muslim friends and have talked with various Imam's about our faiths. However to argue that Christians were just as bad or worse because of the crusades is really funny to me. During the dark ages all the countries acted like this. Infact what about genghis khan or other leaders in the past.

As I said in my post the Crusades were not unprovoked genocide, it wasn't Christians trying to convert Muslims. It was Christians wanting to visit and worship in Jerusalem. It was about Christian countries wanting to stop the Islamic armies from invading other Christian cities. It was to retake the country and city that the Muslims took from them.

It wasn't all self defence but imagine today that Russia or who ever conquered Washington DC. The invaders force all the americans out of the city and populate it with their own people. Then the American states join together and retake the city in a bloody battle during which they kill the majority of the inhabitants.

Now would America be in the wrong? Sure they didn't have to kill everyone but it was their city. Were the natives wrong to try and retake America from the european's? The Crusades were Christians retaking what was rightfully theirs.

Islam is not bad, it's just that Islamic fundamentalism is a far too prevalent form and in general more extreme than other fundamentalist religions. There is no denying that there are serious problems in modern Islam, much more so than in any other major religion or with Islam previous to the last few decades. Personally I reckon that a large number of these problems are occuring purely in backlash against Western culture, a clash between liberal and extremely conservative.

The change in the Middle East does have a chance to be fundamental though, democracy generally follows liberalism and so far all the desire we have seen is for democracy - very few calls for theocracy. Even the Islamist group the Muslim Brotherhood has said that it wants both democracy and secular law in Egypt. There is true hope for a modern, democratic and secular Middle East, in that sort of Middle East there would be no problem with Islam being the dominant religion.