What he said
At the moment I'm having trouble remembering what Abiola and I disagreed on.
Deregulation, that's right. That, and fact son the ground about Haiti. Obviously is wasn't anything having to do with how to treat folks.
Attack of the LGFers
For me, the strange thing about the sheer level of hatred and intolerance of dissenting viewpoints displayed by LGF commenters on questions relating to the Middle East and Islam is that, unlike most of these people, I've spent years living in a majority muslim environment, have seen the dark side of Islamic zealotry at first-hand, and yet, I've managed to avoid developing a generalized hatred of all things Islamic of the kind on show at LGF or "Emperor Misha." In fact, I'm willing to bet that the average Israeli, despite living daily with the threat of being killed by Islamic fanatics while going about his or her daily business, harbors less hatred for Islam than your run-of-the-mill LGFer.
…As I've said before, Islam as practiced by the majority of muslims in our day really does have serious problems, which aren't just confined to "a small minority", as the usual cant on this issue goes. Nevertheless, mindless hatred and dehumanization of all muslims will do absolutely nothing to move things forward to a state where the most we'll have to worry about from religious muslims will be phenomena like the Religious Right's never-ending attempts to get abortion outlawed and creationism into the schoolbooks; to the contrary, indiscriminate bashing of muslims as "vermin", "subhumans", "ragheads" and so forth is a surefire way to undermine any moral claims outsiders may seek to make with respect to the practice of Islam.
