Anne, @TigerLily
why the apologies, for as far as I can see we live in a western democracy & free speech is totally lawful & needed! We have no obliging ‘legal governance from any cult or recognized religion’. (Thank God).
I’ve just quickly scanned this thread & my conclusions are this sort of subject brings out the (I have Muslim / other than Christian friends & those which go back to the "white Christian bad people, dialogues portraying many bad things though the passages of time. But no one mentions the bad things other people of diverse colours/race & religions are doing to each other of the same religion and ethnicity & are still doing.
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There are many many different factions in Islam above and beyond the obvious Sunni/Shi’i cleavage. The main schools (madhhab) of jurisprudence (fiqh) are equally diverse and influential.
Is that how you refer to all religions? I am trying to work out if you are actually trying to be offensive.
See commonly accepted primary meaning below of the word ‘cult’.
Not sure in regards to the extreme or strange part of the above post, to me it means a group of people who have a religion or a set of beliefs. maybe I’m wrong?
Cult is often considered to have a pejorative tone…
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For you and others may be…
For me, the word means, religious veneration and devotion directed towards a particular figure or object. But we’ve all had different educations & upbringings.
OK - ‘cult’ - how about this. Aren’t there many different ‘cults’ in India who believe in this God, or that Goddess - and aren’t they referred to as ‘The Cult of ----’ (whatever God/Goddess is involved.
Couldn’t that also be applied to some of the Ancient Egyptian belief systems.
As for all religions - yes I’d call Catholics followers of a cult, and CofE, and Jehovahs Witnesses and Anglicans. See, I’m not making any distinctions about any particular ‘cult’ - a ‘cult’ is the name (as I use it) for any so-called belief system. The Sky Fairy cult, the Wicca cult, the Christian Scientist cult - you name it - it’s a cult.
Anyone choosing to think ‘cult’ is being used as perjorative is being a little bit too sensitive over the use of a word.
Unfortunately, that’s the status quo
Quite so, according to the dictionary that is meaning 2 
I just wanted to know which was intended.
I would have misspelled it…
And the Anglo/UK world is full of people who can’t spell.
Well done teacher. You must be quite pleased with yourself for spotting the typo.
I’m trying to understand (and clearly failing) how you equate “western christian civilisation” with a a faith that was born in the Middle East and forcibly spread through war and colonisation on other civilisations, or is that not the christian civilisation you mean ? Pretty similarly to the way Islam spread from its early roots in Saudi Arabia throughout the Middle East to Africa and Spain into Europe. The need to make others believe in one’s choice of faith isn’t particular to Islam, although where there is no separation of a theology from the state (such as in Sharia Law countries), then clearly that faith dictates much of what happens in a given society. Is that what you really mean when you talk about “western christian civilisation”, i.e. separation of the affairs of the church (whichever faith that might mean) from the affairs of state ?
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This all started because Eddie didn’t like the fact that I assumed that this attacker, who almost chopped the head off an old lady at prayer in a Christian Church, murdered the Sacristan and violently attacked another old lady who died of her wounds was Muslim.
Was I right or not?
Of course I was. He had three knives and a Koran.
It seems that Eddie has not noticed that France is under a sustained attack from violent Muslim extremists, who do not care for the values of the land in which they live.
This guy had just come from Tunisia, via Italy and I wouldn’t be surprised if there wasn’t a network of radical Islamists being prepared to do exactly the same.
One of the things that I admire most about France is that it defends freedom of speech and woe betide anyone who undermines it, from wherever they come.
Eddie lives in a country where children are murdering children for no better reason than they have been disrespected
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What you say is true but I think religion is a pretext, I think these attacks are politically motivated and religion is a convenient and effective tool - goodness knows there are enough psychologically damaged young people around who can be weaponised 
they don’t commit these crimes all by themselves, do they.
I think the vast majority of Muslims, like the vast majority of Jews, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, whatever, and atheists are not extremists but as soon as they are politicised curiously they become polarised fundamentalists ready to commit virtually any atrocity. It isn’t specific to any religion.
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Jane now I am happy to accept he was a Muslim, but I don’t like to see knee jerk reactions until real evidence is available
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Hardly knee jerk given the previous attacks.
Anyway I am psychic!
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If you are talking about an Islamic Republic, it is based upon Shariah Law and not what any non Muslim would regard as a political legal system.
There are christian extremists we are seeing in the USA who seem hell bent on doing anything they can, legal or otherwise, to keep Trump in the White House, which I find totally bewildering because anyone less Christian I cannot imagine.
Christianity and many other religions are now an excuse for male domination of women.
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Or is it the other way round Véronique? Just how close violent political extremism is to religious has often been remarked - and not only the results but the actual official doctrines and institutional practices of oppressive churches and government regimes are worryingly similar (treating some texts as revealed truth and outlawing others, elevating a chosen people above others - who come to be seen as less-than-human - instituting a party/church ‘priesthood’, compulsory collective rituals, etc, etc).
I think it’s sensible to avoid the divisive term ‘muslim extremism’, not only because most muslims are not extremists, but also because - as I pointed out in another thread - violent extremism has marred the history of almost all religions, especially christianity, and is still virulent today. But ‘violent religious extremism’ is, I think, an accurate and useful description, if only to alert us to the danger of political beliefs taking on religious intensity.
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I think it works both ways depending upon the ideology of the instigator.