Minyan gal,
I would not trust the email you copied and pasted. Abdus Salam, a religious Pakistani Muslim, received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1979 along with two American Jews (one of whom is an outspoken atheist). Shirin Ebadi, an Iranian Muslim woman, won the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize. (The Mullahs have actively tried to suppress her activity.) Orhan Pamuk, a Turkish Muslim whom I think is not particularly religious, won the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature. Muhammad Yunus, a citizen of Bangladesh, won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize. Ahmed Zewail (not Zewai) won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, not Peace. There may well be other errors and omissions there.
“There is NOT a single Jew who protests by killing people.” is unfortunately a false statement because of Yigal Amir and Baruch Goldstein.
The email blasts Nancy Pelosi unfairly. She has been a tremendous supporter of Israel even though she represents one of the few congressional districts in the US where that loses votes. Her opponent this year is a supporter of the anti-Israel anti-Semite Ron Paul.
And just what grounds would you use to stop the Park51 Center? It is entirely within the bounds of existing zoning laws. We are used to seeing anti-Semites and self-hating Jews trying to stop shuls and yeshivot from expanding and it is precisely the laws that protect shuls and yeshivot that protect the Park51 Center. If the effort to stop it — which is led by an apostate Jew who converted to Christianity named Jay Sekulow — suceeds, it may never be possible to build a new shul anywhere when there is community opposition.
While much of the Muslim world is quite backward in comparison with the west today, that was not the case a thousand years ago. The Muslim world was the world’s center of learning and science then, and had unversities when you could barely find a literate Christian anywhere in Europe who was not a member of some religious order. Anti-intellectualism is not *inherent* to Islam, just to extremist Islam.
Finally, you get a much different picture if you restrict the list of Jewish Nobel Laureates to Orthodox Jews. I can only identify two on the list who identified as Orthodox: Robert Aumann (a graduate of the Rabbi Jacob Joseph Yeshiva!) and Rosalyn Yalow (the email spells her name wrong). I am proud to belong to the synagogue Dr. Yalow attended; the social hall is named for her. Other commenters — please identify any other Orthodox Jews on the list.