On Fri, Mar 21, 2008 at 8:16 PM, Joe Brouhard [email protected] wrote:
Each religion considers each other a "falshood"
That's an inaccurate generalization. Many religions consider other religions to be none of their business.
The "civilizations of the world" class I took as a requirement for a bachelor's degree had a couple weeks on the Islamic empire, as an example of an empire that practiced tolerance -- well, the Greek empire was tolerant, as long as the conquered lands organized into city-states that was cool by Alexander; but there were a lot of column-inches devoted to stating how tolerant the Islamic Empire was.
A google search http://www.google.com/search?q=tolerance+in+the+islamic+empire yields all sorts of interesting discussions of the history of tolerance as a civic value, such as
http://www.cyberistan.org/islamic/toleran1.html and historians brandishing evidence and theories at each other
http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2008/02/myth-of-tolerance-in-classical-isl...
Hooray for tolerance! Hooray for diversity! Hooray for the so-called sun that rises and sets so reliably you could set a clock by it!