religion

okay i'm left with one more freaking essay for the whole of this semester, and finally after that i can sort out the mess that is my studies, and then start preparations for the exams. like finally. i haven't read any readings ever since school restarted after the mid-term break, and that was like more than a month ago. that is really horrible, and after monday after i finish this japanese empire essay only than i can sort out all the mess.

(skip the next paragraph if you don't follow football.)

it's been ages since i last caught a champions league match. i think the last one was when i caught the arsenal-barcelona match way back in may 2006 in camp. if by any chance any of you caught, well good for you. i've watched the highlights for all 4 matches, and i can tell u this - bendtner is an idiot. what kind of blocks your own player shot right in front of goal? fabregas' shot was already heading into the goal for sure, and suddenly bendtner just blocks it with his feet and instead of try to backheel it in he sort of fumbles and the chances goes begging. a complete oaf. what's so hard about just widening your legs and let the ball pass through? even if he was in an offside position, i would think he wasn't interfering with play. in any case arsenal gave themselves a hard task to accomplish, then again we've beaten liverpool 6-3 before. we beat milan 2-0 at the san siro like last month? and a few years ago we whacked inter milan 5-1 away. so yes we can still be optimisitic. although i agree with some people - i think wenger is jsut too cautious in the market! come on, buy diego or something!

anyway recently i've read abit about the furore against the fitna video produced by this dutch politician condemning islam as a religion that advocates violence. then yesterday i read a newsweek article, which summed up certain events that aimed at provoking anger at muslims. like the comments the pope made last year by quoting some emperor which was offensive to muslims. and then this. and then the article mentioned about some egyptian journalist who had his baptism publicly advertised. and iapparently the journalist grew up hating islam and his articles basically reflect his thoughts on islam as not being the religion that promotes peace. and remember the danish newspaper that published cartoons really making fun of the dearest prophet.

i think all this is rather sad. if islam really promotes violence, how can it then grow to a religion so widely accepted that 1 out of every 5 earthlings is a muslim? via forced compulsion? there's no such thing as compulsion in religion. i'm sure violence is not a factor in attracting people to embrace islam, or even any religion for that matter. i think people are just trying to distort it for some funny reason or another. the other day the muslim society had a quran display session at the library. apparently some christian (or catholic, i'm not sure) guy attacked fairus verbally claiming that he saw the fitna flim and really made his feelings clear about islam being a religion of violence. i think a lot of people lack tact, making baseless accusations. i think if we are all out just criticise other people's religions then forget about religious harmony and all that stuffs. for all of the craziness of my friends we won't like criticise other people's beliefs straight in their face.

like what's the problem with all this people?from the dutch politician to the christian guy that confronted fairus - seriously, what kind of religion preaches violence? if you ask me, i think all religions preach good and peace. i mean, that's like the basic principles of religions i feel. i'm no theologist, neither am i so well versed in my own religion, but 1 thing is for sure - i think all this open criticisms have got to stop altogether. baseless accusations, fuelled by quickfire ways just to get cheap publicity is just not going to win favours from anyone. it is not going to rid the earth of all the problems. it's a clear fact islam does not promote violence, and those who do are firstly abit perverted in their thoughts, and really, they just happen to be muslims in some cases. it's the same case when the americans failed to realise that the vietcong and the vietminh were really fighting for a nationalist cause. but all they knew was this was part of a global communist conspiracy. it's all the same. double standards everywhere, and failure to grasp local realities are always going to get people in a dirty mess.

okay that's all. i jsut felt like blogging about this tonight out of a sudden.