I have to add. It's a central tenet that Islam at any time until a prophet yet to come arrives, it will be distorted and wrong (each prophet successively cleaning up misconceptions and making it more like Allah's will, with additional muddling in-between), which means there is (for some groups
was) an inherent progressiveness to Islam (the idea that things can be improved. that the ideal state of society is not yet necessarily known). There is also an emphasis on the will of the Ummah (religious community), and unlike apostolic successive theocracy (top down human hierarchy) emphasized by (Catholic and Orthodox) Christianity, in Islam, the religious community as a whole (as in, everyone) is supposed to be the representatives of Allah's will. Ironically, Christianity developed the offshoot branches of protestantism and most major Islamic societies became ever more like early catholicism in its structure over time... and quickly developed caliphate ideas (monarchic right to rule with religious casus belli, which also ends up becoming popular in Europe), though there does still exist less static-institutional Islamic communities in various places. In some ways one could characterize European societies as becoming more socioprogressive than Islamic societies faster as being despite the supposed core ideas of the respective religions.
TL: DR Religions are messed up and not as they were and it's all a mess and it's quite messy and seldom has to do with the qualities inherent to the actual scriptures or how the religion initially was, but is more adapted to/by cultures and agendas.
[MENTION=4235]problemz[/MENTION]
1up(+1) To "Cultural "everything is equally right" relativism" being a misguided idea without any basis. Some cultural aspects are relatively bad or good for the wellbeing of the people living in them, which necessarily means there are cultures that are better for humans than others (in a utalitarian sense).
I'm quite curious about how Islam will deal with the most ugly elements of having to face its takfiri side as militant takfiri Islamists rampage around the middle east in the vacuum created by destabilization or destruction of local secular regimes, which happened to the extreme in Libya, could/can happen in Egypt and thoroughly happened in Mali & Syria with full fledged civil wars. Happened with lower intensity in Iraq after invasion. Is currently happening as default state in several gulf monarchies. Not to mention the constant uneasiness and previous decades of viciousness by takfiri sunni groups in Lebanon. Oh, and when Afghanistan was destroyed as a relatively well-functioning society during the anti-socialist Jihad, leading eventually to Taliban rule. There's also the creeping problems in Pashtun and Balochi areas of Pakistan and the Balochi areas of Iran. Then there's Yemen... Sudan. I'm probably forgetting some other heavily affected places.
Whatever the intended effects of this by those who pour money and arms into such movements in a zero sum war against those they regard as their geopolitical enemies (read: people not under their control), the end result might be a very very violent internal showndown across the middle east that will have Islam purge itself of its currently more terrible elements when it is confronted with people who take some of those elements and push them what they regard as an extreme. A partial mirror is held up that might make some things previously regarded as moderate taboo due to its association with "those terrible people who wanted to kill or control everyone". This is, of course, assuming those terrible people don't win, like happened in Libya, which is now facing its own counterrevolution of sorts but it remains to be seen what exactly that is. If Islam is to transform at all, movements such as Hezbollah and the Sadrist movement seem like crude prototypes of what could both function in a modern world and the defeat the religioneoconservative forces that threaten their communities.
@Anglozionist axis and vassals funding intolerant takfiri thugs.
Saudi Arabia has sponsored religious schools and spread its ugly mark around the middle east, to south asia (including Malaysia), to the Caucasus (sup doku), to North Africa with its intelligence service being deeply involved. It's not some secret or anything. It's pretty out in the open. That the US, Israel, Jordan (probably under duress), Qatar, Turkey and especially Saudis having a clear policy of arming and in some cases training not only secular, but also takfiri sunni "assets" in Syria, including facilitating transport of foreign fighters from especially Libya, the Caucasus and Iraq is no secret to be revealed either. Not even western oligarchy shill publications like NYT pretend this isn't happening. The powers that be in the core countries of the anglozionist empire has a long history of supporting unsavory elements so long as they are the enemy of the enemy, and not being very ashamed of it, but rather touting it as the lesser evil for the local population with ye olde fallback casus belli of "it is necessary for the empire's security and interests (In the US, they say the security and interests of the US. In the UK, they'll say the UK, in Israel, they'll say... and so on) ". Elements inside the inner power circle of the Saudi Royal family being against supporting groups like Al Nusra must be heavily marginalized or inconsequential considering the actual implemented policies over the last several decades.
All it takes is a google search to bind them (varying publications with differing interests) all. It's right there in the open, undisputed in any other way than whether the justifications are good or not.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/oct/26/qatar-troops-libya-rebels-support Stuff like this is more overt than one might think.
If there is anything such as a "worst" or "less bad" side of Islam, the anglozionist axis is supporting them. Just like it is supporting the economically and otherwise self-destructive Kiev regime. The people in charge don't give a shit about the local population or spreading cultural values, etc. They care about having as much control over the cake as possible, even if that means ruining a lot of the cake to sustain or achieve that. That's what humans outside their group are to them, including the 'normal' citizens in the countries they control the most.
In regards to Colombus, if he had some misguided sense of sharing his cultural superiority with the local population... who knows. It doesn't really matter much to anyone except those who think it justifies anything or are very interested in the specific person's psychology.
