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StrangerThan -> RE: Sell me on Islam (8/18/2010 6:35:57 PM)
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I don't have any feel good stories. I don't know enough about the religion to sell anyone on it, and if I did, I wouldn't try. When it comes to religious and spiritual things, either you come to them or not. What I do have is a bunch of disjointed impressions and memories.
I saw a man beheaded. He was, I think, an enemy of the state, not so much islam. But, it was in a public viewing context. Take it for what its worth.
Imagine a bus in Tunisia. Girl on one side in a skirt short enough to be scandalous in the US, liking the fact that I liked her legs. Woman on the opposite side clothed head to toe in black garb. Not even sure a woman is in there really.
I was warned in one country that speaking to a woman, or looking at her was against the law.
The only place I've ever been robbed at gunpoint was in a muslim country. Two notes. There were three of us and the police did the robbing. We were in a cab heading for the American Embassy. Our cab driver pulled into an alley way. 2 police type cars pulled in behind, ordered us out. Cabby disappeared and during the dialog that followed, I learned all Americans were rich and all were filth.
I didn't argue. Aside from the fact that in his eyes, I probably was rich, he had some sort of little machine gun looking thing.
I sat next to a man in another alley while he poured gold bars from melted jewelry. Around us lay folk that could have come from the Arabian nights. Handless, footless, beggars of all types. No one molested the man with the gold bars.
I had a friend who felt it his destiny to leave his sperm everywhere we went. Since he was exceedingly, umm, non-handsome, he usually ended up purchasing the hole in which he left it. I can't remember which country, but he found some prostitutes. My other friend and I were the safe guards of his possessions on these trips. The area was walled in, fairly large courtyard type scene. The ladies had these little outhouse looking structures with beaded entrance ways. My friend waited in a line of about 30 men for his time. None of them cared that he was an infidel or American. Apparently the need for strange, literally, trumps such things.
My favorite places were the open air markets. Spices piled high, scents and noises enough to overwhelm your senses and most of them good. Barter, bargaining, no one pissed at anyone because of who they were.
For the most part, people are people. Different beliefs, different ways of doing things, but if you sit down and talk to them, for the most part, you'll get along. I did however, decline the most recent invitation a few weeks ago to travel to a muslim country. Apparently, they would have come into a compound to learn what was to be taught, and I could not leave it,.
Didn't sound like much fun, honestly.
There's more, most of it jumbled and full of good, strange, and some bad. Mostly, I take people at face value. I find that easier to do with muslims in the US or some other, more developed country. That might sound like a disrespectful way of saying it but I also saw a lot of abject poverty sitting right beside men so wealthy they bought 24 carat coverlets for their wives to wear over their dresses.
Shrug. Selling you on islam is no different than selling you on any religion. What you get is going to depend on where you are.
Muslim is not a term where synonymous conditions exist everywhere. In other words, the muslim beliefs in one country cannot be taken as a stamp by which others elsewhere live.
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