Same Sex Marriage Poll

book notes

A World Without Islam by Graham E. Fuller

Most revered female figure in Islam -- Virgin Mary (mentioned more times in Qur'an than New Testament)

Qur'an has Jesus coming back on Judgement Day

Religions tend to be more tolerant of antecedent religions than newer ones.

Despite Islam's origins as a ruler's religion (and Christianity as an outsider's religion), Western Christianity has a much greater history of involvement with the state.

The Eastern Christian empire actually preferred to fall to the Muslim Turks than the Western Catholics because they would still be able to practice their religion under the Turks.

book notes

Get Capone

Real McCoy came from bootlegger with high-grade product.

Getting Capone for tax evasion rather than bootlegging appears to have been not a result of having more proof but rather a result of juries being much more willing to convict a person of tax evasion than booting legging, since most jurors obeyed the tax law but not Prohibition.

The dispute over the "Ground Zero mosque" is an object lesson in how not to resist intolerance. - By Christopher Hitchens - Slate Magazine

The dispute over the "Ground Zero mosque" is an object lesson in how not to resist intolerance. - By Christopher Hitchens - Slate Magazine: "This kind of capitulation needs to be fought consistently. But here is exactly how not to resist it. Take, for example, the widely publicized opinion of Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League. Supporting those relatives of the 9/11 victims who have opposed Cordoba House, he drew a crass analogy with the Final Solution and said that, like Holocaust survivors, 'their anguish entitles them to positions that others would categorize as irrational or bigoted.'"

Got Medieval: Professor Newt's Distorted History Lesson

Got Medieval: Professor Newt's Distorted History Lesson: "In 962 Abd-er Rahman III was succeeded by his son Al-Hakim. Owing to the peace which the Christians of Cordova then enjoyed [...] the citizens of Cordova, Arabs, Christians, and Jews, enjoyed so high a degree of literary culture that the city was known as the New Athens. From all quarters came students eager to drink at its founts of knowledge. Among the men afterwards famous who studied at Cordova were the scholarly monk Gerbert, destined to sit on the Chair of Peter as Sylvester II (999-1003), the Jewish rabbis Moses and Maimonides, and the famous Spanish-Arabian commentator on Aristotle, Averroes.
So it's easy to see why a group of Muslims creating a community center in the heart of a majority Christian country in a city known for its large Jewish population might name it 'The Cordoba House' They're not, as Gingrich hopes we would believe, discreetly laughing at us because 'Cordoba' is some double-secret Islamist code for 'conquest'; rather, they're hoping to associate themselves with a particular time in medieval history when the largest library in Western Europe was to be found in Cordoba, a city in which�scholars of all three major Abrahamic religions were free to study side-by-side."

best selling books of all time

Other than religion and Harry Potter, the best selling books of all time are:

Little Red Book
Chinese-English Dictionary
And Then There Were None
Lord of the Rings
DaVinci Code
Catcher in the Rye