{"id":48,"date":"2007-09-24T13:50:31","date_gmt":"2007-09-24T13:50:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/astraea.net\/blog\/?p=48"},"modified":"2007-09-24T13:50:31","modified_gmt":"2007-09-24T13:50:31","slug":"embrace-islam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/embrace-islam\/","title":{"rendered":"Embrace Islam"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>What a good idea!\u00a0 It sounds strange given the geopolitical tension around the world.\u00a0 But embracing Islam would be a whole lot more productive than condemning it.<\/p>\n<p>Now, being atheist, I&#8217;m not advocating religion.\u00a0 Rather, I&#8217;m suggesting that a positive attitude that embraces people would have better results than a divisive and condemning one that has been adopted by world leaders.\u00a0 And September is a good time to see the best of Islam.\u00a0 It is the time of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ramadan\">Ramadan<\/a> when practicing muslims fast during the day and use the time to reflect on friends family and good work.<\/p>\n<p>Coincident with the advent of Ramadan and the anniversary of the WTC collapse, a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/mm\/video\/video.php?op=showvideo&amp;vidid=45\">new video<\/a> tape purportedly made by al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden has urged the American people to embrace Islam in order to stop the war in Iraq. \u00a0The speaker makes no overt threats to the US and does not directly call for attacks, according to <a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/1\/hi\/uk\/6984560.stm\">transcripts of the tape<\/a> obtained by several media organisations in the United States.<\/p>\n<p>Religion is not an end in itself and I would not advocate conversion.  Religion is a step on the path to enlightenment.\u00a0 But our own values do advocate compassion and cooperation and it would reduce fear and terror if we were able to be more tolerant and less prejudiced of people representing one of the largest, most homogenous religions in the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What a good idea!\u00a0 It sounds strange given the geopolitical tension around the world.\u00a0 But embracing Islam would be a whole lot more productive than condemning it. Now, being atheist, I&#8217;m not advocating religion.\u00a0 Rather, I&#8217;m suggesting that a positive attitude that embraces people would have better results than a divisive and condemning one that &hellip;<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/embrace-islam\/\" class=\"more-link pen_button pen_element_default pen_icon_arrow_double\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Embrace Islam<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[22,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-living","category-middle-east"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4hwcd-M","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}