Do you think there are any such things as "moderate" or "peace loving" muslims?

[LouAvul]

There are lots of "lukewarm" Christians. (Rev. 3:16) These are Christians who go whichever way the wind blows. They don't want to make waves.

This is a characteristic of human nature and something we all must guard against (as Christians).

But seeing as how many Christians are lukewarm (vote democrat, embrace homosexuals [viz. Episcopalians]), would it follow that there are many muslims who similarly don't uphold Islam's murderous tenets?

[r9etb]

Some people need to get their facts straight first before they call those who disagree with them names— That's you ignoramus!

Glass houses, sister. You're the one saying "all."

That's pure foolishness on your part.

[Mr. Silverback]

No sweat, FRiend. Hope you slept well.

[petertare]

I have expressed my opinion. I seem to be in a majority.

When will these coward “muslim” moderates, the ones that take advantage of the benefits of American citizenship—when will they defend American values in contrast to the evils within their throat-slitting religion? When will they end their occupation attitude, come out in the sunlight, stand for America, and quit masquerading a war council in the guise of a religion?

And enough of that ground zero iman phoney and his Jesse Jackson victimhood—just does not play in middle America.

tick...tick...tick..

[Georgia Girl 2]

A quote from the president of Eqypt. “There is no such thing as moderate Islam. There is only Islam.”

[ConservativeWarrior]

I think that there are many “moderate” Muslims who do not want to get their hands dirty in actual jihad (they like their middle class/western style life), but they are more than willing to support it financially.

I've heard Islam described as mixed school of fish. 90% of the school consists of just basic fish, your "moderate" muslims.

10% of the school are sharks. The muslims killing infidel men, women, and children.

The 90% are supporting the 10% by providing political and physical concealment. The 90% are also jihadists, and are helping to eliminate the infidel by concealing the true murderous nature of islam. Keep in mind that the koran teaches that muslims may commit any sin against islam if they do so in order to convert or kill the infidel.

This is why you don't see mass outrage from the 90% over muslim acts of terror commited by the 10%. They don't just condone the violence, they are actively working to support it.

There is no such thing as a "good" or "moderate" muslim.

[Ditter]

Mick, here is the question again. “When will these moderate muslims .... defend America”. Americans are waiting to hear from them. All we hear is silence and then when something in the west is destroyed, we hear them cheer. BTW the movie I quoted (THAT YOU FAILED TO RECOGNISE) is The Treasure of Sierra Madre, Humphry Bogart is in the mine and the bandidos are calling him out. Great movie!

[eleni121]

I call em as I see em ‘bro’.

[ClearBlueSky]

I am not narrow-minded or uninformed on world cultures or religions. Nor am I simplistic enough to insist that, because there are tame lions I can pet, the nature of lions is not to attack and eat me.
The people you describe have not been, and are not being, instructed fully in the ‘religion’ of the Koran. They are, in fact , living in DEFIANCE of its tenets. THAT is the difference. Are they aware of all the Koran says? To know and reject it is one thing, to not know( and I’ve heard that most Muslims rely on their ‘imams’ for a translation of the Arabic, so are they taught what it says or what that version of Islam chooses to translate or pass on?) is to claim belief in a watered-down/sanitized version of Islam.
If they’re taught a revised- and cleansed- version of the Koran then I will give it to you that there can be ‘good Muslims’.But good because of ignorance, not knowledge.
If they are taught the true Koran, then they would have to have chosen to reject what the Koran, as the rest of the world has known it for centuries, is.
Is the Sufi Koran a truncated version of the world Koran? Or are they woefully uneducated in what the Koran says- which is why the rest of the Muslim world considers them ‘heretics’? Is the only ‘good Muslim’ possible one that is ignorant of what the Koran says a Muslim should be?

I am not ignorant. I know that human beings are capable of individuality; but I suspect that possibility of such individuality only increases in relation to the cultural distance from Arabic Islam’s dominance. If they were never fully indoctrinated in Islam, different cultural influences and individual natures would more likely predominate.

So I stand by my statements and belief. The KORAN is the handbook of evil. All that Islam is doing in the world today IS ORDERED in the Koran. If an individual considers the unedited Koran ‘holy’, then they are as evil as it is.

If they do not know, and were not taught, the real tenets of Islam as dictated in the ‘holy book’, then they are identifying with Islam out of ignorance. For, if they are truly good people, they could not know all that Islam is and still call themselves Muslim. Just as truly ‘good’ Germans, during WW2, could not have known all that Nazis stood for, and were doing, and still willingly call themselves Nazis.

If an individual, or group, edits and revises the Koran to eliminate all the orders to commit brutality and violence and says the Koran of the majority of the Islamic world is WRONG, then I could imagine using the words ‘good’ and ‘Muslim’ together.
The problem is- for such people today- daring to want a revised version of Islam is suicidal. They are outnumbered. Real, unedited Koranic Islam, is just what the jihadists say it is.
To break from it is to be its first victim. To not break from it is to be considered the same.The enemy of the Sufi you describe, among others, and the rest of the non-Islamic world is the same. Real Islam.
The Koran IS Islam.
One cannot both embrace and reject evil.

Heretics( like the Sufi and others) are aberrations- like the odd carnivore who will not immediately attack you. We-meaning this country and the non-Islamic world- cannot afford to assume that heretics are the norm or the majority. The lions of Islam will not- and do not- tolerate them. We cannot rely on them, or be distracted by them.
We must deal with the rampaging lions.

[50mm]

Just kidding.

[Las Vegas Ron]

Oh boy, okay, I deserved that one!

LOL, good one 50mm ;0)

[Las Vegas Ron]

Thanks FRiend, sorry once again.

[50mm]

LOL!

Couldn’t help myself.

[Thrownatbirth]

Haji was a Sikh

I'm familiar with Sikhs. Hadji was from India and partly responsible for the f***ing Nehru jacket craze.

I just don't remember flying carpets around minarets as part of Bhuddist/Sikh culture. (Of course we're talking Hollywood writers mid-60's.) Let's not argue about a CARTOON!.

[SuziQ]

For Islam to be a Christian apostasy, it would have to have been Christian, but apostatized. That is clearly not the case as Islam is based on pagan religions.

It's my understanding that Mohammed 'borrowed' from several religious traditions in the area in which he lived, so it would have been an amalgamation of Christianity, Judaism and pagan religions in the Middle East. The dietary laws of Islam resemble those of Orthodox Jews, but I've never read the Koran, so I don't know what, if anything he actually borrowed from Christians.

Actually, the praying several times a day thing kinda sounds like the Liturgy of the Hours, which was prayed by priests, monks and religious women, though that was apparently a continuation of the prayer habits of the Apostles who followed the Jewish schedule of several times a day prayer.

[kevao]

Sure, they’re called MINOs — Moslems In Name Only. And they’re few and far between, and usually die quickly after an Islamic cleric puts out a fatwa on them.

[inthaihill]

The question was whether or not there were moderate or peace loving Muslims. You can define muslims all you want to rationalize whatever you want to come up with whatever conclusion you want to come up with. Do not dare force your rationalizations on me and my experience.

To answer the question again - go read up on Sufism and then try to rationalize how they act and then do your animal comparisons all you want. People are not animals and do not operate from instinct.

The Koran is an abomination and an evil book reflecting the person who started the religion. Th question did not address the Koran but was about muslims as people. The Sufis are not just a few individual people breaking away individually from the others. They are a group, a sect and as such have a common belief system which is peace loving. That should answer your question. Please find a sufi to talk to before you condemn them as heretics.

Stand by whatever you want to stand by. In the end, we probably agree that the basic tenets of Islam are evil and probably originated from satan himself.

[ClearBlueSky]

We do agree that Islam is, basically, evil.
We part company on people who see what that ‘religion’ is doing the planet yet still want to identify with it. I can’t see anyone belonging to an evil belief system while insisting they are not ‘of’ it. You can.
I’m not FORCING my rationalizations on anyone by simply stating them on a board where opinions are welcome!

You don’t like my animal analogies- how about a human one.
The Ku Klux Klan. A Klan family. The menfolk went out and burned and hanged people out of hate for what they were. The mom and kids were home, petting the dog, baking cookies, being polite to their non-black neighbors. Knowing what the Klan was , and was doing , they did not consider the word an insult. Why not?
Why wear the symbol of something the world hates if you do not believe what it stands for? Why honor a book you consider evil? Why identify yourself with the Charles Manson family if you don’t admire what they did? Why say you believe in Islam when you see what Islam is doing in the world, and you will be judged by that?

I’m really trying to understand how people can split hairs on this- on Islam/Muslims- when they do it for nothing else.

When I see a boy scout, I assume that he believes in what the boy scouts stand for. The same with any other organization- if you wear the uniform or identify yourself as a member, I have every right to see you as a representative of that organization. This is true for P.E.T.A., N.A.M.B.L.A., the A.M.A. or the P.T.A.
Why is it not true for people who insist they believe in Islam and the Koran?
How can I ASSUME that there are cannibals who( contrary to the basic idea of cannibalism) are vegetarians who wouldn’t eat me?
I see a contradiction in reasoning- and ONLY re. Muslims/Islam. And at the core of that contradiction is fear-fear of people who are ‘harmless and peaceloving’.
Rabid rabbits???
I will read more on the Sufi- but it was you who said their own religion considers them heretics. And IF they reject the evil in the Koran, in their own religion, then I can see them being called ‘good’ .You, obviously, know Sufi on a personal basis and have chosen to disregard their identification with an evil belief system in favor of their daily interaction with you. And you may be right about those Sufi, as people. But I cannot help but think that, in daily life, the people who identified with the evil that was Nazism also petted their dogs, kissed their children, smiled and laughed with their neighbors and grew petunias.

I cannot, and I don’t think the world can afford to, give anyone who willingly says they believe in Islam, that kind of trust.

I’d just like to understand what it is about Islam that is, basically, ‘good’. We know what it DOES- the news tells us that. NOT being that kind of Muslim does not make one good- what is the POSITIVE face of Islam? Is the other side of the screaming mask merely NO face? Where is the glowing, GOOD, face of Islam?

[Ditter]

I too am waiting for an answer to your question. tick... tick.... tick....

[ClearBlueSky]

A difference that makes no difference IS no difference.

[inthaihill]

I do not really disagree with anything that you have written. Unfortunately, I am not capable of “knowing” everyone in a particular belief system. I judge on the basis of meeting individual people - one at a time. To say that all Muslims are hate-mongering, evil human beings means you are bigoted against anyone that claims to be a Muslim without really getting to know them. You hate their religion and hate them because they say they are Muslims.

Sorry, but I just cannot do that. I am only one person meeting one person. My experience (and, yes, I have met many muslims) is based on experiencing human interaction. What is your experienced based on? Reading books, watching TV?

I have had many students who were muslims and many colleagues working along side me who were muslims. I asked a PhD student from Pakistan once about the radical muslims. He said educated people in Pakistan stay far away from “those idiots, because they give us all a bad name.” I do believe that even you would like this wonderful, friendly and very Westernized muslim. BTW, his goal in life was to move to United States to live without all the crazies running around killing people.

Also a muslim from Bengladesh once told me I was the best teacher he ever had. This, probably because I spent a lot of time with him, getting to know him, his background and his religion. When I went on the Silk Road in Western China, I picked him up a beautiful picture of the famous mosque in Kashgar. He immediately gave me a couple of books on Mohammed and Genghas Khan. We remain to this day, very good friends. You want me to say that he is evil just because he is a Muslim? You want meet to say all those Sufi muslims I met and enjoyed company with in Xinjiang were evil just because they are believers in the Koran.

Yes, we do definitely part company when the rubber meets the road. I deal with humans one at a time regardless of their beliefs. I have met a whole lot more evil and intolerant Christians than I have Muslims. I do admit, however, that I do not go to the bad places where bad muslims are located.