Just as you claim Islamic rituals serve a purpose to educate individulas so to can Idols, serve a purpose to make one understand and or be a focus point for prayer/ meditation.
What I am seeing is that you are defending rituals in Islam as having a higher purpose but you maintain a different set of standard for the rituals of other cultures.

*Note* Let not my above post give the impression that all idol worship has beneficial and or benign effects because clearly quite a lot of idol worship was created and nurtured for the sole intention of exploiting the masses.

Religion is culture.

The patience and discipline I was on about is the ability to put the body needs on a lower priority, which many of you would fail in that respect. Every time I touch on these kinds of subjects someone jumps in and quote me examples of people from third world countries. Those countries you see around you are just fake countries, they are newly emerging nations with wealth, who are yet to reach an adequate level of understanding. It took the west hundereds of years of struggle, civil wars and traumatic experiences to reach those very understandings.

Speaking of Bradford, Leicester, and the like, I have actually noticed that Devon, and particularly North Devon has become the haven for the white exodus from those cities. I remember during my few months stay in Barnstable I met one guy who had just moved in from Leicester and from the friendly chat we had I could infer the reason for his move, and to be honest, if I was in his shoes I’d have done the same

You RS, Australian Lebanese or just Aussie?

It can be but often it is not. In the examples Eva made these are do do with a national culture (or some other base) and not religion.

Scotland is full of English settlers fleeing from the Islamic invasion of the South..

7:84

Speak to me,I know I am a lowly woman...
Explain please 'some other base'
Explain please why you consider Boomhauer's post yet you ignore me?

Tricky one I know.

ignore them - you are far from being a lowly woman.
You are far from being an unhelpful bod as well.
Cobblers to those who don't recognise it...!

Fake countries?? But if the locals followed the teachings of the Quran as they should why would we have the need to complain?

Those 'fake' countries implement Shariah - occasionally with just enough fullness to be well awful for women and non-Muslim men.

Evidently Shariah is the Nirvana of Islam (a metaphor I use advisedly) and all Islamic people must aspire to living by it (that's a given in the Q'ran - you buy Islam you buy Shariah), so I should think the 'fake' countries would be considered the poster-children of Islam, not merely a work in progress.

ROFL! This will be why food and drink is banned from display in the ME during Ramadan, because the locals are unable to discipline themselves sufficiently
Yes we see that tranquility being demonstrated between Shia and Sunni Muslims "the most serious security threat not only to the region but to the world at large".
"I think we need to come to understand that a sectarian divide in the Islamic world is a threat to all of us."
"Sectarian tension between Shia and Sunni Muslims has been a fact of life for more than 1,000 years"
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-24893808

I have been tempted to put you on Ignore but you're the BE clown

Apologies, I assumed comment #252 was rhetorical.

Some other base means some other grouping. The impolite and impatient behaviour you refer to is a result of social conventions within a group, not the religion of that group. If this were not the case, muslims in Indonesia would display exactly the same characteristics of muslims in Qatar. However, if it would cheer you up I would concede that there is often an overlap cultural norms and religious norms, and that you may have simply been using a shorthand in your comment.

Boomhauer's post was incorrect, hence the need to respond.

I'd say culture is only partly religion though a crucial part to many. Language is another crucial part of culture and it isn't necessarily from the culture that the religion came from.

What I find more and more from certain regions is that culture tied to ethnicity trumps all and religion is used as a cover or to reinforce ethnic identity.