In defense of Islam

Before I begin, let me set the tone. I am a conservative. My only complaint about the war is that it was 10 years late. Of course that is because a certain someone who was president at the time ignored the problem -- that's an entirely different discussion.

Several things got me thinking recently. They were both posts on FR. The first, was Has U.S Threatened to Vaporize Mecca? about Rep. Tom Tancredo idea of MAD with Mecca as our deterrent. The second was Preserving modesty in the pool (Muslim women in Seattle). The former is a more popular topic but the latter is much more interesting (see the comments). The second article is about Muslim women who rent out a pool after-hours and use it privately with no men present. I actually saw nothing wrong with it. I thought I would be a minority in that discussion, but it turns out quite a few fellow Freepers shared my opinion. The point being, if it is after hours, no one is being stopped from using the pool and they are paying for it, then there is nothing wrong with modesty. In fact, this fits nicely with the culturally conservative ideas. Compare that to the trash that Hollywood spews out and you see what I mean. Point being that we may actually agree with Muslims on some things. A quick Google and you see that something like 90% of the Muslim vote was for Bush in 2000. We all know 9/11 would have happened whether it was Bush or Gore. Imagine a president Gore on 9/11 (cringe, shudder).

With that established, now the point of this article. I think Rep. Tom Tancredo screwed up big time. I think he needs to retract his statement. The reason being, we can't go to war with every single Muslim in the world at the same time (there's a billion of them). In fact, I know we don't want to go to war with every single Muslim. Imagine if the commies had threatened to nuke Israel (Jerusalem) even Christians who hated Reagan would have been up in arms. While it may sound like fun, taking on all of your opponents at the same time is pretty dumb. The thing is, I don't think they are all our enemies. The northern alliance in Afghanistan, the Kurds, the Turkish are all Muslims who have been helpful (some more than others) in recent years. If you have talked to any vets from Iraq, you know that the Kurds are reliable allies, far more than the Arab Iraqi troops. The Afganis and Iraqis who voted a few months back are all Muslims. These people are not our enemies.

We need to target our fire at our enemies. Every time I see an attack on Muslims in general, I think of someone attacking all Christians when in reality they meant the Unitarians. We need to make a distinction between Muslim Iraqi kids who get blown up and Muslim palestinian kids who do the blowing up. Part of the problem is the Muslim community, sure you can say these terrorists are not Muslims and that this is not Islam, but terrorists simply say the opposite and thus the jokes about Religion of Peace (ROP).

The problem with ROP and why it sounds so absurd is because you can clearly see the the religion that is supposed to be peaceful is actually incredibly violent. Evey time something brutal is done in the the name of Islam someone comes up and says ROP! ROP!.

In reality there are two religions here and they both call themselves Islam and both followers call themselves Muslims. One is a ROP. The followers of this are our allies and the people we are protecting. The other is the head chopping group that flies planes into buildings, bombs pizza places and slaughters school children. We are at war with one of these religions unfortunately they both call themselves Islam.

We need to fix this problem. Let our friends who follow the real ROP be called Muslims and their religion Islam. I think it is the least we can give them. Let us call our enemies, the religion we are at war with something else. Since they claim to be Muslims, calling them something else will piss them off to no end (an added bonus). We could use Islamofascist and Islamist, but they are too close to Islam and thus would make them happy.

I propose Sand-Nazi (a term others on FR have used) be the new term we use on FR (can someone come up with some thing better?) . I like Sand-Nazi because it captures their anti-semitism, brutality and the socialist part highlights the fact that they oppose globalization and capitalism amd there is no way it will confused with the Islam our friends follow. Now if only our friends in the ROP would make this distinction.

yeah, by my own admission, i don't anything about Islam. Every county does things out of its own self interest. It would be silly not to.

I agree with you on the peaceful muslim bit. However, I am talking about people another poster called "apostates". If by moderate muslims we mean moderate headchoppers,there is nothing modertate about them in reality. There are "apostates" who call themselves muslims and try to cling to some nominal similarites to the headchoppers. These are the people from which i think a martin luther type will need to emerge.

PS i'm hoping for a good discussion here.. im counting on not getting zotted (which would really suck since i've had this account since i joined FR over a year ago). Check out the key words that have been added.

I remember reading a news story a few years ago about a very smart young man who clerked in a convenience store in the evenings. He used to tell his friends that he didn't worry about being robbed and then shot because he was confident of his ability to talk the robber out of shooting him. He said that he'd just give the robber the money, talk soothingly to the robber and all would be well.

That young man is dead now, shot by a robber of the convenience store. The young man's confidence in his own persuasive powers and in the persuasive force of sweet reason was mis-placed; the robber didn't listen, or, if he listened, was unconvinced.

Sometimes the only way to stay alive is to shoot first and save the words for the funeral of the other guy.

The curses of Islam are dreadful! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property - either as a child, a wife, or a concubine - must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.

Individual Muslims may show splendid qualities. Thousands become brave and loyal soldiers: all know how to die. But the influence of the religion paralyzes the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science - the science against which it had vainly struggled - the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.

So said Sir Winston Churchill. I'm with him on this one.

You admit to not knowing anything about Islam...I would suggest reading books written by Bernard Lewis on the subject, particularly "What Went Wrong", "The Middle East: A Brief History of the Last 2,000 Years" and "The Crisis in Islam". He is the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor of Near Eastern Studies Emeritus at Princeton University, and is considered to be the leading authority on Islam in the western world.

I'm no expert on Islam either, but if you want to speak intelligently about the subject, you need to know a little more than what you can learn on FR or DU.

I, personally, do not believe Tancredo owes anyone an apology. Given the context of the conversation (if one reads the whole conversation) his comments are not only rational but approriate, in my opinion.

If a nuclear weapon were to go off in the center of New York City, how would our government, and the world react? I think the question is a fair one. What do you do?

Do you just pick out a city at random in the Mideast and drop one on it? Do you bomb Mecca as this guy theoretically proposed? Do you do nothing? Millions would certainly die, and do nothing but say "we are going to catch them"?

This guy did not just jump up and say "We should bomb Mecca", he was placing it in a framework of a theoretical situation.

If you think, for even a single second, that nobody in the US government is gaming (and I use that word with the "serious" meaning) those situations, you are wrong. Just because it is so horrible we can barely contemplate it doesn't mean it frees our government from the duty of planning for it.

Now, you may not agree with that, and maybe I don't either. But it IS a choice, one that you can be %100 sure SOMEONE has played out. And well they should. Would it be appropriate? I don't know. But I DO know destroying Mecca as an option, is no more or less palatable than destroying a city full of people.

Most Muslims I know are decent, regular people. They do not have the desire, will or mutilated ideology that is threatening to innocents, both muslim and non-muslim. The MAJOR problem here, is that these extremists LIVE in the mainstream of the muslim religion. I do not doubt for one second that many "normal" muslims know one, or more than one person who is spewing poisonous ideological rubbish. While we in the west do not generally interfere with people's desire or right to think, speak and disseminate a poisonous, treasonous ideology, it has, in my opinion, reached a point close to shouting "FIRE" in a crowded movie theater.

For that reason, Muslims must get off of their collective asses and start "taking out the garbage". I am sympathetic to thier plight. Nobody likes to be guilty by association, and the human response much of the time is to become defensive and more intractable.

But that is unsatisfactory. Muslims need to stand up, be counted and contribute to the solution of this problem. If they do not, the western world will, at some point, be forced to require them to make a choice, as in the Cowboy Bush's declaration "You are either with us or against us."

And let me tell you: If there is indeed a nuclear explosion or some other major catastrophe involving muslim terrorism, Americans and other westerners are not going to be quite as concerned with political correctness or sensitivity. And a lot of genuinely innocent muslims are going to suffer as a result.

So that is why the priority is for the Muslim community to cut this cancer out of thier midst, and disown them completely with no "But..." qualifiers. They have been AWOL from this responsibility, and next time, it may be to late for them to take action, and I would hate to see that.

As for the correct term of definition, I prefer "Islamowhackofacists".

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