[Buddha-l] Buddhists taking a stand against Islamaphobia

[James A Stroble]

On Sat, 04 Aug 2012 17:56:08 -0400
curt steinmetz <curt at cola.iges.org> wrote:

> Q: "How does one 'attack' Dharma?"
> 
> A: In the first place, we can remove the quotation marks. There is 
> nothing ironic or doubtful about Islamic attacks on the Dharma. In
> the second place: so how does Islam attack the Dharma? Is this really
> a mystery to anyone? Muslims simply employ the usual methods for this
> sort of thing: forced conversion; destruction of temples, stupas,
> statues, texts, etc; execution of apostates; execution of anyone who
> questions the execution of apostates; and so forth.
> 
> Curt
>

At the risk of appearing to disregard the wrongness of violence against
persons (which I definitely do not intend), I have to say I still don't
see it. Especially the apostate thing.  Both Christianity and Islam
reject forced conversion, and I would think that it is as much a
self-contradiction as my earlier definition of truth.   Destruction of
physical objects is not directly an attack on the Dharma, is it?
(Though you have me at texts:  I am still traumatized by Umberto Eco's
"Name of the Rose", where the library burns.)   The point being that
these are attacks on people, some of whom may constitute the Sangha,
not attacks on Dharma, unless we conflate the two.   

So now we have the question: If Dharma is the _Truth_, ok,
scratch that, -- the Teaching, does the eradication of teaching
of it equal the destruction of Dharma?  I am trying to work
out how this culture war thing works.  

Andy