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["Marie McHarry" <mmcharry AT dtnspeed.net>]

<<Well, I would have to disagree as to my question being American.  It came 
from long discussions with friends who are Palestinian and Russian, having 
traveled to Bahrain and having had business dealings with Egyptians and 
Arabs (buying and selling Arab horses).>>

Palestinians and Russians who are living in the US and Egyptians and Arabs
who are selling horses to an American necessarily are not necessarily
representative of the millions of Muslims living in Muslim-majority
countries in the Middle and Far East. Secularists exist in those societies,
more freely in some countries than others, but they don't appear to have
much political power these days. Looks like Sharia law is spreading
considerably faster than democracy. For example, in Iraq, which was formerly
a secular state, the majority say they want an Islamic government. What
they'll have when the shooting stops and the dead are buried may not even be
that -- they may end up as another Iranian province (with an independent
Kurdistan unless someone decides to make a final job of wiping out the Iraqi
Kurds for good).

<<I think it is American to see it as religion because we have made it about

religion, they didn't originally.  It was quite acceptable to be other than 
Muslim and for other religions to live peaceably within a Muslim country. 
Christians stopped that, not the other way round.>>

Lynda, you lost me with this paragraph. Muslims were tolerant under the
caliphate, but today religious Muslims in religious states (the Taliban,
present-day Iran, and a substantial part of Africa, Saudi Arabia) aren't
winning awards for tolerance. (Of course, we could have the same situation
here if our own fundamentalists took over.) I'm not sure how "Christians
stopped that." It looks more to me like the rise of fundamentalist to
positions of power. In modern times, religious tolerance in Islamic
countries appears to have resided in the strong ruler (the Shah and Saddam
-- the Christians were protected under Saddam -- come to mind).

Marie