Have you been to Hiroshima, Osaka, Jakarta and Johor? Even with turban and long beard, I'd feel safer in Japan.
Exactly. If you read the context of my replies to rocketsjudoka, I'm talking about general safety in Japan, not religious intolerance, which wikiwiki seems to have misread.
Sanctioned religion is about maintaining power. If you are a monarch, you promote the religion where you are anointed by God. It serves you well to have a rabid subordinates maintaining the social order while you enjoy the benefits of wealth. The cause of converting non-believers plays to the power of the religious leaders.
I've been to Kobe and Kyoto. Sorry if there's a big difference, in that case I might be misjudging. I've been to Karachi and Peshawar. I'm pretty sure those would be considered by you more dangerous than Jakarta and Johor.
Kobe/Kyoto is similar to osaka. I think you are underestimating the likelihood of you getting mugged in a place like Johor, turban or no turban
well its not like the whole of UMNO had a meeting and decided, hey this is what we're going to do. u burn this, i burn that, u parade that cow head. its a few individuals who have too much to lose. especially when the current ruling state govt is putting out all of the corruption, bribery and plain out stealing done by the previous ruling members out in the open.
Well you see, it's not REALLY a commercial investment. Think of it like they're loan sharks. The Wahhabists who are strongly connected with the royal family are interested in propagating their brand of Islam and this is the way. The royal family does it as a gift to the Wahabbists. The reason the royal family does this for the wahhabists is because the wahabbists' brand of Islam is an iron-clad control tool for discouraging people from pursuing a democracy. The Wahabbists are helping the royal family because their brand of Islam specifically eliminates the voice of women (half), minorities (a good portion), and youth (a huge portion). This leaves a small group of middle-aged men who are presented with a proposal. The proposal says that: if they hold on to ancient traditions of male dominance, ethnocentricity and tribalism, they will go to heaven... where they can be even more tribalistic, male dominant and ethnocentric. It quite literally states in hadith that a Muslim should never question the leader of the ummah/country and that if the leader is acting unethically, they should just go along with it because they will receive rewards for tolerating the unethical behavior. The lone exception is if the leader openly declares that he is an infidel and that there is no God. Then they can murder him and start over again. Google it if you don't believe me. You have to really read a few pages in the hadith books to get a feel for what a sick cyclical mentality it is.
Mathloom, just wondering, did you live in the USA or England or why do you speak (write) English so well?
Nope never lived there. Me and my family are not entirely sure why we speak English well.. It's not unusual for the next generation of people in Dubai who are currently around 20 years old though. For us, some of the reasons we've thought of are: - Sitcoms. We watched a lot of American television as kids. - My two eldest brothers got their degrees in Texas (I was 8yrs old). - My uncle has live in Texas for a few decades, and that was fascinating. - Music. We're all musically inclined so we listened to a lot of English music. - American school.. Though we didn't pick up the Lebanese accent from teachers. - We're 3rd culture kids. Arabic, Iranian, Turkish and Dad even lived in India. We all speak at least 5 languages: English, Arabic, Persian, French, Ajami (from our village) and even some Urdu. As for writing, that's more specific to me. I obviously don't focus on sentence structure when on the BBS but I used to write for all kinds of journals and newspapers and am still very anal about grammar (friends hate me for it). I also read an insane amount of material, something like 7-8 hours a day. Probably way too much information, but what the hell, I'm bored lol