Overdosing on Islam--Kristof

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http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/12/opinion/12KRIS.html?hp


Nicholas Kristof on a trip to Iran...as I was reading it, I came to the same conclusion he did in the last paragraph:

<snip>
QOM, Iran — In the offices of an ayatollah here, I was jokingly introduced as coming from the Great Satan.

"Humph," a young man responded immediately. "America is only Baby Satan. We have Big Satan right here at home."

<snip>

Another Shiite leader outside the club of power, Ayatollah Jalaledin Taheri, has denounced the regime as "society's dregs and fascists who consist of a concoction of ignorance and madness. . . . those who are convinced that yogurt is black."

<snip>

There's a useful lesson here for George Bush's America as well as for the ayatollahs' Iran: when a religion is imposed on people, when a government tries too ostentatiously to put itself "under God," the effect is often not to prop up religious faith but to undermine it. Nothing is more lethal to religious faith than having self-righteous, intolerant politicians (who wince at nose studs) drag God into politics.

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1. Kristof is spot on, as usual

BushCo should listen to his words of wisdom, but of course they won't. :-(