What possible business can an army of Americans and Europeans have in telling these people on the other side of the world how to run their lives, these people who were literate and civilized when our ancestors were still painting themselves blue and worshipping trees? After I returned home the United States in 1972 after my first long trip to Afghanistan, I soon discovered that fewer than a third of American college graduates knew on which continent Afghanistan was to be found, and very few indeed knew anything whatever about its culture, religion, or history. I was there in 2000, one of a small handful of UN people in the country, and when an avalanche or UN bureaucrats arrived with the occupation, none of them had any interest whatever in learning about the culture and traditions of the Afghans. The UN told me to shave off my beard and to stop wearing Afghan clothing, because the UN was there to destroy the tribes and make these people into consumers and workers in open-pit mines.  The burka is the demand of city women who want to be able to move about the city incognito without innuendo, not a primitive hold-over from tribal customs. The ignorance of Americans and the propaganda they swallow are appalling.

If Congress passes that Hate Crimes law Jim Yell could be imprisoned for saying things like this.

Well said Jim Yell.

Religious bigotry is perhaps the biggest problem in our tiny world. History shows us time and time again how destructive these types of ideologies can be. Honor killings, the Salem Witch Trials, the Spanish Inquisition… the list goes on and on.

Until we, as a species, evolve beyond our need to follow some invisible mythological father figure in the sky, we will continue to have an excuse for the barbarity we inflict on one another.