Am sorry but your arguement fails logically within the historical time frame, if the Qu'ran really preached a religion of hate and oppression, then the entire Mediterranean would now be speaking Arabic. I suggest you watch this and learn about the faith you vehemently criticize.

Islam, followed by more than a billion people today, is the world's fastest growing religion and will soon be the world's largest. The 1.2 billion Muslims make up approximately one quarter of the world's population, and the Muslim population of the United States now outnumbers that of Episcopalians. The most populous Muslim countries are Indonesia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and India. The number of Muslims in Indonesia alone (175 million) exceeds the combined total in Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran, the traditional heartlands of Islam. There are also substantial Muslim populations in Europe and North America, whether converts or immigrants who began arriving in large numbers in the 1950s and 1960s. In keeping with tradition, the two main branches of Islam today are Sunni and Shiite.

Beginning in the 1970s and 1980s Islam remerged as a potent political force, associated with both reform and revolution. Given the large number of adherents, it is no surprise that Muslims incorporate a broad and diverse spectrum of positions in regard to liberalism and democracy. Some are secularists who want to disengage religion from politics. Others are reformers, who reinterpret Islamic traditions in support of elective forms of government. Still there are others who reject democracy entirely.

Top row. Grey or black. Please good fabrics and not made in Bangladesh by kids. If possible.

One thing I found particularly disturbing in this program was the crippling spiral of debt that has driven many Indian farmers to commit suicide. Exposure to the international economy - and the protectionist policies of many Western countries - has led to a decline in the value of traditional crops like cotton. Coupled with the cost of buying tractors, fertilisers and irrigation pumps, this has left many farmers in a desperate situation. Without help from the government they are forced to turn to traditional money lenders who charge extortionate rates of interest on their loans. A similar situation used to exist in Bangladesh, but the pioneering work of Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank has helped to lift many people out of the shackles of poverty and debt. The Grameen Bank offers microfinance services to its customers, providing low interest loans - often to women - which are collateral free. Inspired by the success of the Grameen Bank, there are a number of NGOs now offering similar services. Furthermore, there has been a recent increase in the number of Islamic NGOs offering Islamic microfinance services. These Islamic NGOs conform to the Islamic prohibition on interest (ribaa). They offer interest and collateral free loans on a profit and loss sharing basis (mudaaraba). If a profit is made the bank will take a predetermined share of the profits. However, if there has been a loss - for example, their crops may have failed - as long as the customer has not been negligent, the bank will bear the financial loss. The banks also offer special loans (qard hasan) to the poorest customers in which only the principal sum must be returned.

*bangladesh

Just another update on the progress of the 2007 Cricket World Cup:

Not only are Pakistan out of the tournament - but today India were beaten by Sri Lanka. Following their defeat against Bangladesh this means that India will also exits the tournament in the first round!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/cricket/6478525.stm

Not only are Pakistan out of the tournament - but today India were beaten by Sri Lanka. Following their defeat against Bangladesh this means that India will also exits the tournament in the first round!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/cricket/6478525.stm

From Wikipedia:

While My Guitar Gently Weeps" is a rock song by The Beatles from the double album The Beatles (also known as The White Album).

It was written by George Harrison, who originally performed it with a solo acoustic guitar and an organ; a demo version, longer than the officially released version, can be heard on the Anthology 3 album and in reworked form on the Love album. Eric Clapton played lead guitar on the album version of the song with a Gibson Les Paul guitar. On The Concert for Bangladesh, he performed it on a Gibson Byrdland guitar, and later acknowledged that a solid-body guitar would have been more appropriate.

What you are talking about is Sharia Law, this is not Islam, from Wiki I quote.

"Sharia deals with many aspects of day-to-day life, including politics, economics, banking, business law, contract law, sexuality, and social issues. Some Islamic scholars accept Sharia as the body of precedent and legal theory established before the 19th century, while other scholars view Sharia as a changing body, and include Islamic legal theory from the contemporary period.

There is not a strictly codified uniform set of laws pertaining to Sharia. It is more like a system of devising laws, based on the Qur'an, Hadith and centuries of debate, interpretation and precedent.

There is tremendous variance in the interpretation and implementation of Islamic law in Muslim societies today. Liberal movements within Islam have questioned the relevance and applicability of sharia from a variety of perspectives. Several of the countries with the largest Muslim populations, including Indonesia, Bangladesh and Pakistan, have largely secular constitutions and laws, with only a few Islamic provisions in family law. Turkey has a constitution that is officially strongly secular. India is the only country in the world which has separate Muslim civil laws, framed by Muslim Personal Law board, and wholly based on Sharia. However, the criminal laws are uniform. Some controversial sharia laws favor Muslim men, including rejection of alimony and polygamy. Most countries of the Middle East and North Africa maintain a dual system of secular courts and religious courts, in which the religious courts mainly regulate marriage and inheritance.

Saudi Arabia and Iran maintain religious courts for all aspects of jurisprudence, and religious police assert social compliance. Laws derived from sharia are also applied in Afghanistan, Libya and Sudan. Some states in northern Nigeria have reintroduced Sharia courts."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharia#Contemporary_practice_of_Sharia_law

That's all nice and everything Conan but maybe you should fact-check that the saying of "Soldaten sind Mörder" comes from a publication in 1932. Given what occurred afterwards I really rest my case regarding that.

It's wrong to lay the blame at people who selflessly give their lives to serve their nation. Maybe you should look at how politicians use those armed forces, wars are not run by generals, they are instituted by politicians. For me it's up to the citizens to make sure that that path is only used in the most drastic conditions as outlined by calvados.

During the 1994 Rwanadan genocide the entire world could have intervened with a larger peace-keeping forces but who came forward? Canada sent one general, Belgium sent the only westernized force that is self sufficient, Bangladesh and Ghana committed some troops but the overall UN mission was small and could not stop the outbreak of violence, their force was just too small. Between April 6 and mid-July 1994, a genocide that is estimated to have left between 800,000 and 1,071,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus dead at the hands of organized bands of militias unfolded. In the wake of the Rwandan Genocide, the United Nations and the international community in general drew severe criticism for its inaction.

Despite international news media coverage of the violence as it unfolded, most countries, including France, Belgium, and the United States, declined to intervene or speak out against the massacres. Only Belgium had asked for a strong UNAMIR mandate, but after the gruesome murder of the ten Belgian peacekeepers protecting the Prime Minister in early April, Belgium pulled out of the peacekeeping mission.

Mostly because most other countries sold arms to the Rwandans prior to the event.

Simply saying that armed forces and the people in them are stupid, mindless killers is a gross simplification of the reality we face in the world.

Furthermore it is good that armed forces exist, because only then can they be accountable for their actions, that is why there is the ROE document. If no armies existed that would give rise to private armies and mercenaries, that ARE NOT accountable for their actions, see PMC presence in Iraq.

Bangla Dhun was the opening sequence to the Concert for Bangladesh. It was performed by Ravi Shankar on the sitar, Ali Akbar Khan on the sarod, Ustad Alla Rakha on the tabla, and Kamala Chakravaty on tamboura. The song is approximately 17 minutes in length.

The song is split into two parts, and almost seems as if it is two separate songs. However, this is not uncommon in Indian classical music. In this composition, the "first" part contains the alap, antra, and main body of the song. The second part is faster and includes the jhala and a fast paced "back-and-forth" between the melody instruments and between the melody instruments and the tabla. Both parts maintain the same melodic structure (see raga).

Since Indian classical music is usually based on improvisation, portions of this composition may also be improvised.

The Concert For Bangladesh was the event title for two benefit concerts organized by George Harrison and held on the afternoon and evening of August 1, 1971, playing to a total of 40,000 people at Madison Square Garden in New York City. It was first benefit concert of its magnitude in world history, featuring an all-star supergroup of performers that included Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Ringo Starr, Billy Preston, Ravi Shankar and Leon Russell. An album was released later in 1971 and a concert film was released in 1972, with later releases for home video. In 2005, the film was re-issued on DVD accompanied by a new documentary. The concert raised US$243,418.50 for Bangladesh relief, which was administered by UNICEF. Sales of the album and DVD continue to benefit the George Harrison Fund for UNICEF.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concert_for_Bangladesh#Ravi_Shankar_set

choggie - when you say "Mohammed, if he had truly been a prophet, he would have let the women of his culture, lead" you are obviously rather ignorant of the world we live in.

Currently the largest Muslim country in population, Indonesia, has a woman head-of-state, Megawati Sukarnoputri. In Bangladesh both the Prime Minister's office and the role of the leader of the opposition have been alternating between two women - Khaleda Zia and Hasina Wajed. In Pakistan Benazir Bhutto has headed two governments and Turkey - a Muslim country with a secular state - has had a woman Prime Minister, Tansu Ciller.

Muslim countries have had female Heads of State or Heads of Government long before the United States, Italy, France and many other secular democracies.

News from Al-Jazeera English, recorded at 20:00 hrs on January 11, 2007. Reaction to George Bush's plan to send more troops to Iraq, Afghanistan events, Bangladesh events, intervention in Somalia.

Al Jazeera (Arabic: الجزيرة‎, meaning "The Island", is a television network headquartered in Doha, Qatar. Al Jazeera initially launched as an Arabic news and current affairs satellite TV channel of the same name, but has since expanded into a network of several specialty TV channels.

The original Al Jazeera channel's willingness to broadcast dissenting views, including on call-in shows, created controversies in autocratic Arab Gulf States. The station gained worldwide attention following the September 11, 2001 attacks, when it broadcast video statements by Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders.

In 1999, New York Times reporter Thomas L. Friedman called Al-Jazeera "the freest, most widely watched TV network in the Arab world." The station first gained widespread attention in the west following the September 11, 2001 attacks, when it broadcast videos in which Osama bin Laden and Sulaiman Abu Ghaith defended and justified the attacks. This led to criticism by the United States government that Al Jazeera was engaging in propaganda on behalf of terrorists. Al Jazeera countered that it was merely making information available without comment, and indeed several western television channels later followed suit in broadcasting portions of the tapes.

On 25 March 2003, two of its reporters covering the New York Stock Exchange had their credentials revoked. NYSE spokesman Ray Pellechia claimed "security reasons" and that the exchange had decided to give access only to networks that focus "on responsible business coverage". He denied the revocation has anything to do with the network's Iraq war coverage.

While prior to September 11th, 2001, the United States government lauded Al Jazeera for its role as an independent media outlet in the Middle East, US spokespersons have since claimed an "anti-American bias" to Al Jazeera's news coverage. In 2004 the competing Arabic-language satellite TV station Al Hurra was launched, funded by the U.S. government.

On January 30, 2005 the New York Times reported that the Qatari government, under pressure from the Bush administration, was speeding up plans to sell the station.

On November 22, 2005, the UK tabloid The Daily Mirror published a story claiming that it had obtained a leaked memo from 10 Downing Street saying that U.S. President George W. Bush had considered bombing Al Jazeera's Doha headquarters in April 2004, when U.S. Marines were conducting a contentious assault on Fallujah.

In light of this allegation, Al Jazeera has questioned whether it has been targeted deliberately in the past — Al Jazeera's Kabul office was bombed in 2001 and a missile hit its office in Baghdad during the invasion of Iraq, killing correspondent Tariq Ayoub. Both of these attacks occurred despite Al Jazeera's provision of the locations of their offices to the United States.

Al Jazeera cameraman Sami Al Hajj was detained while in transit to Afghanistan as an "enemy combatant" in December 2001, and is now held without charge in Camp Delta at Guantánamo Bay.

- More @ <ahref="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_jazeera">Wikipedia. http://english.aljazeera.net/News.

Basically think what happened in New Orleans after Katrina, in New York, San Fransico, Florida, Bangladesh, India, Netherlands, Shanghi...

It's not minor change that will take place, it's a whole rearrangement of the conveyer system of ocean currents. Increasing intensity of weather effects to extreme, drought and rainfall. Many species of animals will simply die out because their enviroment's weather system has cahnged drastically.

We as individual groups of humans can adapt, but nature cannot but ultimately we as a whole depend on nature and it's resources so it's in our best interest to look after it collectively.