No, shos, that's not Islam. Only Islamic radicals believe in killing non-Muslims. And I think what's been happening is that a wave of radicalism has been spreading throughout the Muslim community especially with all the stuff that's been happening lately, and all the terrorist organizations that have been distorting Islamic beliefs. Also Muslim governments are more prone to corruption, and since there's no separation between church and state with then, government corruption leads to the corruption of the religion as well.

sorry to disappoint you guys, but my mom is an arabic and islam teacher ._. however i'm not an expert, so i did open Wiki in Islam in english to see. there's a section of "Jihad" under duties there.


So uh, i made a mistake. it's not the muslim's duty to kill non-muslims, it's a collective duty. as long as there are some others killing them, i don't have to do it.

The Jihad is not killing every non-muslim. It is the collective duty to convert the non-muslims into muslims. However, some interpret this as cleansing the world of all non-muslims, by killing all of them.

There. Jihad doesn't have to include killing at all.

you know what, fine; okay. that is debated; the problem is that there are so many muslims that the part that does interpret it to the extreme is 10 times larger than the whole of israel, including its 25% arabs.

The Swedish elections are held today! I am a member of The Environmental Party (middle/left - liberal), and so I've voted for them. The right-wing coalition is probably going to win the elections, unfortunately, but what's worse is that the xenophobic party The Swede Democrats are going to get into the parliament, and if the elections are close, they can stop the two governmental options from gaining a majority in the parliament without getting their support.

Speaking of politics, you Brits thought you had a tough time forming a government.

If I were from Belgium, I'd say that you Dutch thought you had a tough time forming a government.  

We Dutch had our elections 4 days before the Belgians. We've been at it longer now. Although Belgium hasn't had a stable government since 2006 or something.
Still, the British with their THREE parties (yes, three whole parties) that needed to form a government, in a process that took up to a WEEK (yes, a whole week). I can now only imagine the chaos in the US if the Tea Party actually becomes big enough to force a 2-party coalition.

Everyone loses.

The Swede Democrats got into the parliament and got 20 mandates out of 349. The right-wing coalition has 173, the left-wing one has 156. WE FAIL FOREVER.

Lol. So not a good day for Isa. Woah 20 seats? UKIP or BNP would be more than lucky to get one.

Our system doesn't work like yours - the British system isn't representative of what the whole population thinks, for example. If so, the Liberals would have way more than 50-ish representants. If a party gets exactly 4.0% of the votes (the barrier for entering the parliament is 4.0) you get 16 mandates. Then, you get an additional mandate for each ~0.35 of the votes.

But yeah, out of the ones who voted, 5.8% voted for SD.

Ed Milliband has been elected as new leader of the Labour Party in the UK, beating his Brother, David Milliband by 1.3%.

I have no real comment on that, seeing as I don't know enough about them, but I think they'll bring a much-needed change to the Labours, and most importantly, way more charisma than Brown.  

What do you guys know about the situation here? you know with all the peace talks and other stuff?

I've only read the headlines this time, actually. Still, I'd like to hear your view upon this, because you can bring an Israeli perspective I can't get in Sweden.

well it's nothing really big, as far as i know the whole mess is because the palestinians don't want to even consider talking about peace unless we stop building houses, and obviously we don't want to stop building them, so who knows what's gonna happen.

there was also this new report about the flotilla, which was again totally biased against us =\ i didn't quite read alot of newspaper lately so there isn't much i can tell x_X

Well, considering the whole world urges you to stop building houses in the occupied areas, maybe you should try it...? Every new house built is viewed upon as a provocation, so their claim is (albeit not very well-formulated) reasonable in my opinion.

are you aware to the fact that these houses are built for people to live in? O_o meanwhile they're in caravans~ i dunno anything else about this.

here's a funny thing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAqaG3WyJus

all the news i could find say that it must have been made by israel cuz no other government is smart enough to do it XD they even specified which unit in the army(I have 3 friends there ) is suspected

sad thing is, look at the comments...


*sigh*

Shos, what religion are you?

He has stated previously that he recognizes the Jewish traditions, but is an atheist.

I know only 2 people who are Atheist (Shos and a friend on Roblox). Atheists are rare.

Not in Sweden. Also I think all of the mods except for Livio are atheists, in fact (I don't know about Harumbai or Dando, but I am fairly certain the others are).

Atheism isn't rare at all anymore, Cedric. Chances are you just assume people are religious unless they say otherwise, which isn't a good approach to take.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/04/opinion/04blow.html?_r=1

Very interesting graph about religion in contrast to poverty.

Also, for you North Americans: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_atheism#North_America