http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061121/ts_nm/religion_iran_azerbaijan_dc_1

This is the reason for my extreme displeasure. Whatever happened to Islam being a religion of peace and tolerance? The clerics - the ones who (one would hope) would be the best equipped to reply in a rational manner - word for word, point for point, intellectual to intellectual, concept to concept, fact for fact - have instead called for death.

All this fellow did, like Salman Rushdie, was to write. He did not kill or incite anyone to kill anyone, Muslim or otherwise. But his detractors haven't bothered to meet him on the battleground of ideas; instead, they have decided that he should be silenced with extreme prejudice.

This makes me wonder: perhaps they want him killed because their own ideas are intellectually and morally bankrupt, perhaps his views are more valid than theirs, and they know that they cannot prove otherwise. Therefore their reaction is to kill him, so as to preserve their own monopoly on spiritual knowledge and prevent any better view from gaining the upper hand. A sort of "If you can't beat him, then kill him" approach.

I wonder when they'll issue a fatwa against me?

LMT