Personal responsibility is the flipside of personal freedom, Jozef. I don’t imagine you’d have it any other way.

Or are you saying the gunmen weren’t to blame because they’re Muslims? Where’d the imam fit in there?

Well, Ritienne 3 is technically Muslim. So it’s personal.

For a start, John, there isn’t an Islam but many Islams, just like there isn’t one Christianity but many Christian denominations, plus sects, plus fringe elements, plus assorted loonies. In Malta we even have a chap calling himself the “Anglican Church in Europe”. The Archbishop of Canterbury hasn’t issued a fatwa yet, but he should.

Some of the worst anti-Muslim hate speech comes from the mouths of Muslims themselves: Sunni vs Shia. And some of the worst Muslim pogroms (sorry, I had to borrow this word from the Jewish vocabulary) were perpetrated by Muslims. And there are Ismailis, and Yazidis, and Druze, and Sufis, and Ahmadiyyas, and all the way up to Nation of Islam.

It doesn’t make sense to expect there to be one central authority.

Who’s the central authority for Christianity? Is it the Pope? The Archbishop of Canterbury? The Assyrian Patriarch? The Archbishop of Uppsala? The Patriarch of Moscow? Jerry Falwell?

Secondly, and Jozef mentioned this, political Islam is a recent phenomenon. It started in the 18th century with radical Muslim preacher (in Europe he would have been Calvinist) Muhammad ibn Abd Al-Wahhab, who allied himself with local ruler Muhammad bin Saud. Fast forward to 1914 and that meddling bisexual fool Lawrence, and we get Saudi Arabia. And that’s when the trouble really started.

It’s terribly un-PC to point the finger at Saudi Arabia (the political entity) but apparently perfectly fine to point the finger at Islam.

You know, I can’t help feeling we screwed up badly with Bin Laden and Al Qaeda. Instead of making enemies of them, we should have helped them bring down the Saudi regime. After all, it was their initial and final aim. They only got pissed off at the US and the West because we kept supporting the evil Saudis. But money trumps principles.

We have these enemies all over the world that have nothing to do with religion. China is another one. Instead, we obsess with some imagined Islamist threat, framing it in terms of religion instead of politics. It’s a Saudi/Qatari/Emirati/Kuwaiti threat, not an Islamist threat.

Apologies, Wormfood. I misunderstood you, and should have known you were being sarcastic.

On second thoughts I have read the whole comment, and Jozef has maliciously or mistakenly (take your pick) misrepresented me so much that I feel I have to reply.

Jozef accuses me of failing to distinguish people from their religion, and says that only then will I get his point. Perhaps I fail to do so simply because it is he who is failing to distinguish people from their religion (Islam in his case).

He then mentions irrelevant stuff such as the Financial Times saying that ‘they (the murdered people at Charlie Hebdo) asked for it’, as if it is also my opinion, when it most certainly isn’t.

He goes on to comment that Obama ‘couldn’t even be fagged to excuse himself in person for missing last Sunday’. Now I ask, what has Obama got to do with me?

Jozef then goes on to say that I am ‘perverse enough to let the ones at Charlie Hebdo die in vain. That they not be offended’. Are you deliberately slandering me, Jozef, or are you just stupid.

I made it amply clear in my posts that no one has the right not to be offended, and that I believe in free speech. Let me spell it out to you: the murderers who killed the people at Charlie Hebdo, just like all terrorists, are scum. Happy?

Jozef then suggests that I might believe that religions should be banned. He can’t be further from the truth. Free speech necessarily implies religious freedom.

Cut the crap, Jozef.

“And you, I presume have no idea how many Jews were hidden away inside his Vatican…”

Jozef, it seems that you have some difficulty in understanding plain English.

My point was precisely that there are good people and bad people in all religions, and that we shouldn’t judge everyone on the actions of an extremist minority.

Yes, I do know that many Jews were hidden inside the Vatican. I also know that there were many Nazi priests. Like I said, there are good people and bad people. I am not a history denier.

Until you get this basic point, I won’t bother wasting my time with reading the rest of your post.

Jozef, I’ll assume your post was addressed to me, since you didn’t say.

“Exactly. You just lack the mental instruments. Hindered by your irrevocable faith in reason to describe and determine everything”.

This just exposes your prejudice.

“Labelling people according to their denomination”.

And where exactly have I done so?

“Rowling’s logic means minorities must be left to their devices, and so what if Pakistanis took to selling their kids in rural England”.

No. It just means that people should not be held accountable for the actions of others. No more and no less.

Liberal, if you haven’t noticed I was taking the piss out of the type of person that tends to make up the Xarabank audience. Of course inequality is the natural state of things.

Is something wrong, Baxxter?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8L7EUduABA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y73N2baMr2s

And all I get is some ‘liberal’ laying on the paedo-Catholic.

Give me a break.