[MD] What's missing

[skutvik at online.no]

Magnus and all .

On 20 Mar. you admonished yours sincerely:

> Even if you're incapable or unwilling to understand my (and Case's it
> seems) view about the intellectual level, please keep your opinions
> about Islam to yourself. The "fear tactics" you mention has nothing to
> do with Islam, but only the fanatics using it to promote their own
> distorted version of Islam. Fanatic Christians are just as "relieved"
> from intellectual values as fanatic Moslems. So don't use the MoQ to
> demote or promote religious beliefs, that's *not* what the MoQ is
> about.

To promote religious beliefs is as far from my mission as possible 
but the MOQ has a lot to say about religions which it relegates 
the role of major social patterns. As I see it the new Testament 
Christianity is much intellect-influenced, Jesus was a sensitive 
"antenna" who picked up the signals from Greece and became a 
intellectual pioneer in the social-value steeped Mid East (his 
"Christ" aspect is not my concern) and one sees the intellectual 
footprint in his rebellion against Mosaic Law. He claimed that the 
said law was for the good of humans, not the other way round, 
and also claimed the equality of all humankind, all of which goes 
squarely against the social credo that the individual only has 
value by belonging to - and if necessary sacrificing itself for - for 
the common cause. (On God's behalf of course). Islam and 
Judaism have not had a "Jesus" to loosen their social bonds and 
only have the choice between orthodoxy and apostasy. The 
intellectual aspect of Jesus teachings only came to the fore after 
the Reformation and Enlightenment so Christendom before this 
watershed were just as social-tied and backward. In your 
definition of the intellectual level this does not make sense, but 
the MOQ view leaves you and the SOM in the dust.  

IMO

Bo