Say what... this?
Where is the "Nuke Mecca" crowd? The "The only good muslim is a dead muslim" crowd? The "Islam is a death cult" crowd? The "Intern all Arabs" crowd? The "Islam is a religion of peace" crowd?I've had a few run-ins with these people over the past few months. I've tried to make the obvious case that not ALL 1.6 billion muslims in the world are blood thirsty animals. And I've been called everything from a muslim to a communist to a democrat to a traitor. I've taken a beating for standing up against what I saw as bigotry...And many others have gone through the same.
But today we saw muslims handing flowers to our troops, kissing pictures of President Bush and waiving American Flags.
Is this just an act? Are they trying to lull us into a false sense of security while they are plotting to kill every last one of us in the name of their "Moon God"? Or are many of them simply held against their will by brutal dictators and/or religious fanatics who have warped their muslim ideals and ways?
I choose to believe it's the latter. And I hope the above mentioned crowds are gone for good.
It's not a little ironic that broad brushes are decried even as they are used. Of course Mecca shouldn't be nuked, nor should all Arabs be interred. Muslims, like any other group, are going to be a mixed bag.
That Iraqis have welcomed US troops in Baghdad and elsewhere is heartwarming. It shows that we have the potential to reach Muslim hearts and minds across vast cultural barriers.
Does it say anything more about Islam?
When Ceaucescu fell, when the Berlin Wall came down, did the joy of the Romanians and East Germans demonstrate anything positive about Communism?
The answer to all of the above is "no."
While Saddam ran a secular cult of personality in a Muslim nation, a look around the Islamic world reveals a panorama of autocratic and dictatorial regimes of varying degrees of brutality. The most democratic and Westernized example, Turkey, has conducted multiple holocausts against Armenians, Assyrians, and others, and has driven out most of its sizable Christian minority in recent decades.
Like Communism, Islam has a dismal record as a system under which free and open societies can flourish, anywhere it is a significant cultural force.
In fact, cults of personality, Saddam's secularism notwithstanding, are not new in the Muslim. Islam it self is a posthumous cult of personality to its murderous, brutal founder, Mohammed. The forceful imposition of sharia and connversion at swordpoint are not new, they have been with Islam since the beginning. Islam is not, at it's core, a religion of peace. The Mohammedan impulses within Islam that lead to conflict with the West are still there, I believe intransigently so.
So, it seems to me that lumping "nuke mecca" bluster with a sober assessment of the ugly truths about Islam is more emotional than accurate. However, since the premise of this thread is that all of the above are part of some crowd, and the implication is that we've been missing in action, here are some threads I posted yesterday about reaction in the Arab and Muslim world to the events in Baghdad...
Shock, disbelief at Saddam'sdefeat
(Islamic reactions)
US Marines Topple Towering Saddam Statue
(ArabNews.com tells the truth)
Jordanians Stunned Following Events in Iraq
Exclusive: US Occupies Baghdad
( pssst... ArabNews scoops the world! )Take a look, and I think you'll find that Muslim reactions are, as should be expected, a mixed bag.
A sidenote: the past few weeks, I've noticed a lot of the "why isn't the so-and-so crowd on this thread?" jeers... as though that means anything.
Different posters are animated by different topics, that's why we have more than one thread a day. There are topics that are generally of interest to me that I've hardly glanced at since the beginning of the liberation of Iraq. When the war is over, my interests there will probably resume. Also, even though I've spent a lot of time on FR during the war, posting dozens of threads, but I've flat-out missed a ton of others. Occasionally a title will catch my eye, and at closer examination I find it's two days old and has 250 posts.
My suggestion is that if you see a thread that illustrates some point you've been trying to make in an ongoing debate with some particular poster, flag them to it, and keep the conversation civil. You (I'm using the collective "you" here) might be surprised at the results.
