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Which is more of a threat to me personally, Christian fundies or Muslim fundies? Christian fundies, obviously, because they are far closer to taking control of this nation and persecuting all and sundry than any Muslim group will ever be.

That's been the point all along: yes, Islamic fundamentalists seek to rule the world, bring the decadent West to heel, but it's a gorram pipe dream. Good freakin' luck with that, Osama.

Time was, the evil commies wanted the same thing and they ran themselves straight into the ground. What the makes you think the Muslims will have better luck than the USSR in its heyday??? (Cue the "They're out-breeding us!" argument...)

It's not gonna happen--I don't know what is wrong with y'all that you think we're in such terrible danger from the Muslims. Yes, Muslim terrorists can kill people and blow shit up, but that's it. Without an invading army and military superiority, they got nothing. At best, they could convince us to get the hell out of their backyards (which is a good idea anyway), but they are never gonna run this country (except in the psychological sense of making us turn this country into the racist dictatorship their propagandists believe we already are).

That's why they're not the threat y'all want to pretend they are. That's why folk bring up Christian fundies who are a real threat to the peace of this nation.

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Until there is an organized, world-wide Christian movement that uses violence as a tool, with the goal of spreading Christendom everywhere at the edge of the sword, such comparisons are feeble and silly.

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There is far more violence in the Bible than in the Qur'an; the idea that Islam imposed itself by the sword is a Western fiction, fabricated during the time of the crusades when, in fact, it was Western Christians who were fighting brutal holy wars against Islam. All monotheistic religions, and not just Islam, have their fair share of violent and intolerant scriptures, as well as bloody histories. Thus, whenever Islam's sacred scriptures—the Qur'an first, followed by the reports on the words and deeds of Muhammad (the Hadith)—are highlighted as demonstrative of the religion's innate bellicosity, the immediate rejoinder is that other scriptures, specifically those of Judeo-Christianity, are as riddled with violent passages.

More often than not, this argument puts an end to any discussion regarding whether violence and intolerance are unique to Islam. Therefore, before condemning the Qur'an and the historical words and deeds of Islam's prophet Muhammad for inciting violence and intolerance, Jews are counselled to consider the historical atrocities committed by their Hebrew forefathers as recorded in their own scriptures; Christians are advised to consider the brutal cycle of violence their forbears have committed in the name of their faith against both non-Christians and fellow Christians. In other words, Jews and Christians are reminded that those who live in glass houses should not be hurling stones.

How come we keep on asking the same question, [about violence in Islam,] and don't ask the same question about Christianity and Judaism? Jews and Christians have engaged in acts of violence. All of us have the transcendent and the dark side. … We have our own theology of hate. In mainstream Christianity and Judaism, we tend to be intolerant; we adhere to an exclusivist theology, of us versus them. An article by Pennsylvania State University humanities professor Philip Jenkins, "Dark Passages," delineates this position most fully. It aspires to show that the Bible is more violent than the Qur'an:

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In terms of ordering violence and bloodshed, any simplistic claim about the superiority of the Bible to the Koran would be wildly wrong. In fact, the Bible overflows with "texts of terror," to borrow a phrase coined by the American theologian Phyllis Trible. The Bible contains far more verses praising or urging bloodshed than does the Koran, and biblical violence is often far more extreme, and marked by more indiscriminate savagery. … If the founding text shapes the whole religion, then Judaism and Christianity deserve the utmost condemnation as religions of savagery.

Several anecdotes from the Bible as well as from Judeo-Christian history illustrate Jenkins' point, but two in particular—one representative of Judaism, the other of Christianity—are regularly mentioned and therefore deserve closer examination.

The military conquest of the land of Canaan by the Hebrews in about 1200 B.C.E. is often characterized as "genocide" and has all but become emblematic of biblical violence and intolerance. God told Moses: [quote[But of the cities of these peoples which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance, you shall let nothing that breathes remain alive, but you shall utterly destroy them—the Hittite, Amorite, Canaanite, Perizzite, Hivite, and Jebusite—just as the Lord your God has commanded you, lest they teach you to do according to all their abominations which they have done for their gods, and you sin against the Lord your God.

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So Joshua [Moses' successor] conquered all the land: the mountain country and the South and the lowland and the wilderness slopes, and all their kings; he left none remaining, but utterly destroyed all that breathed, as the Lord, God of Israel had commanded.

As for Christianity, it is impossible to find New Testament verses inciting violence, as those were purged when the New Testament was created. Those who espouse the view that Christianity is as violent as Islam rely on historical events such as the Crusader wars waged by European Christians between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries. The Crusades were in fact violent and led to atrocities by the modern world's standards under the banner of the cross and in the name of Christianity. After breaching the walls of Jerusalem in 1099, for example, the Crusaders reportedly slaughtered almost every inhabitant of the Holy City. According to the medieval chronicle, the Gesta Danorum, "the slaughter was so great that our men waded in blood up to their ankles."

In light of the above, as why should Jews and Christians point to the Qur'an as evidence of Islam's violence while ignoring their own scriptures and history?

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The religious right thing as I see it are a group who someone goes to if they want to rile up a response, not a group they take orders from

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Virginia abortion rights advocates saw it coming. After Ken Cuccinelli, a rising Republican star known for his hard-line stances on most social issues, was elected state attorney general last year, they knew it was only a matter of time before he zeroed in on abortion.

Earlier this week, Cuccinelli issued a legal opinion advising the state of Virginia to tighten regulation of abortion clinics, holding them to the same standards as hospitals. Abortion-rights groups believe that these regulations would force the majority of the state's clinics out of business.

Cucinelli's tactic is not new. In 2001, Mother Jones ran a story about the rise of what abortion rights advocates call TRAP laws, short for Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers. The article, written by Barry Yeoman and titled "The Quiet War on Abortion," detailed the anti-abortion movement's shift from targeting the legality of the procedure to applying pressure on its providers:

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The new stealth strategy has its genesis in the 1992 U.S. Supreme Court decision Planned Parenthood v. Casey. The ruling reaffirmed 1973's Roe v. Wade, signaling that overt bans on abortion were unlikely to pass constitutional muster. But it also declared for the first time that states have some authority to regulate abortion clinics, as long as they don't place an "undue burden" on women's access to abortions.

The Casey decision started abortion opponents rethinking their tactics. Since direct assaults on Roe wouldn't fly, "there had to be a shift in strategy by regulation on the outskirts of abortion," says Dorinda Bordlee, staff counsel for Americans United for Life. That's when leaders developed a new approach: Couch the issue in terms of women's health. By claiming that abortions take place in dirty facilities and cause such illnesses as depression and breast cancer, right-to-lifers realized they could subtly move the focus of the debate.

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According to NARAL Pro-Choice America, varying degrees of TRAP laws have passed in 44 states plus the District of Columbia. While he was a Virginia state senator, Cuccinelli pushed for the passage of stringent new regulation of abortion clinics. Tarina Keene, the executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia, explained that Cuccinelli's previous efforts were stymied by a slim Democratic majority in the state Senate that blocked his proposals from reaching the floor. She is not surprised that he is using his current post to try to circumvent the legislature to achieve his longstanding goals.

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