Extremism + Media = Idiocy

We're expecting protests in Nairobi today, so the warning's gone out to vacate the city centre by late morning (which meant a cancellation of a couple of meetings). The protest is to happen outside the Danish Embassy, in protest to those infamous cartoons...

Mentioned it to one of the old dears at the East African Women's League, basically an organisation made up of white Kenyan and expat women of a slightly "older" generation, and she referred to them as "Muslim idiots". I didn't think she was really the kind to engage in a discussion on the various factors coming to play in the issue.

The key word is extremists. I've lived and travelled fairly extensively in muslim countries, and in many areas of every day life they ain't no different from you or I - they want to live peacefully, bring up a family and enjoy what life has to offer. Unfortunately an ugly mix of an extremist minority, media portrayal/persecution, and historical western policies has come to a head over the past number of years.

Interesting info I heard from a cleric recently (can't recall where, sorry), that most of the so called "muslims" who involve themselves in violent protests in many parts of the world cannot actually even read the q'aran in it's original language, and are relying on someone else's translation/interpretation of it - which is then open to all sorts of abuse, obviously.

Regarding the Taliban as representative in any way of Islam is a bit like regarding those who bomb abortion clinics as being representative of Christianity.

Something I've dwelled on for a while now (and perhaps it's worth a study one day) is how much of what is occuring is the result of the media-dominated society we live in nowadays? Would we be seeing the same scale of cyclic responses if not for the instantaneous conveying of "news" and imagery that occurs in our modern world? There have been other examples (plenty) of extremism in the name of religion over the centuries, and I'd be curious to compare the scale of previous instances with regards to how quickly or otherwise news spread. Whilst this is all completely fucked up, from an historical perspective it's a very interesting time to be examining the confluence of events, technology and socio-political factors that have lead to where we are now. And to where the hell we're heading...