If you have a problem with the Muslim faith, by all means bring them up. I'm personally not claiming that Free Republic should be a Muslim criticism free zone. But that's not the same thing as claiming that Muslims can't possibly be patriotic based on what the most extreme followers of that religion say, do, and claim their faith says.
We hold every other faith- and even cults- to their own doctrines and manifestos; but damned if some aren't bound and determined to divorce the Koran carrying Muslim from the Koran itself!!
Spend less time looking at the Koran and more time looking at the Muslim carrying it. That will tell you more about whether they are good or evil than the Koran will, just as carrying a Bible does not make someone honest, trustworthy, or good. I have plenty of problems with a variety of religions from a theological basis, some of them quite mainstream. But I'm ultimately concerned about whether they are good neighbors or not. That's not something one can reliably determine just by looking at their holy book or professed faith.
How many more Atta's, and his compatriots, do you want to trust? Did looking at him tell the people he lived near whether he was good or evil? He didn't go around screaming in the street and bombing infidels in his neighborhood, did he? How do the people he dealt with in NJ feel about him now?
So the terrorist of 9-11 were considered 'good neighbors' by people like you, and not suspected based on his religion and what it says about infidels? How does blind trust like that make you feel when it cost all those lives?
You have to look at the Muslim without the rose-colored glasses that are the mark of those who want to avoid a truth that may be too ugly- and too large- to deal with cleanly.
And comparing the fringe/extreme elements of other religions is fine until you come to the part where the ONLY religion that boldly states it must dominate, is Islam. It is also the only 'religion' ENFORCING that belief through bloody means, globally.
The whack-job people like Jim Jones, or backwoods preacher types, aren't crying 'Jihad' on the world, or hacking heads off on TV.
If I say I'm a Christian, people have the right to assume that I believe that for which Christianity stands-and they have to right to judge me by it.Same goes for you if you are a Mason, or a Democrat, or a Hassidic Jew, or even a Boy Scout troop leader. You refuse to judge Muslims by the scripture they hold sacred; giving them every excuse to be duplicitous. Why such latitude with words plainly written in the Koran?
Yes- there are bad members of every religion; but on the planet, right now, ISLAM is the 'religion' causing wholesale terror. Don't compare isolated street thuggery with organized crime, or the perverse bad 'Christian' who becomes a serial killer with training camps for terrorists, or countless Muslim mothers who can't wait to sacrifice their children for Allah.
The serial killer was one man, killing a small number, and his religion will call him evil and reject him as a Christian. There was no permission for his deeds in his place of worship.
The religion of the 9-11 terrorists, and every barbarian executing people, calls them martyrs and elevates them to revered status. Whether or not your local Muslim shopkeeper will obey them, the words in the 'sacred Koran' DO encourage the bloodshed we are seeing! There is PERMISSION for it in mosques, and in the Koran.
It IS about religion, no matter how you try to talk around it. Our enemies know why they hate and attack us, and they say it over and over- RELIGION.
And I would rather distrust EVERY potential Mohammed Atta out there, and be wrong, than trust them and be proven wrong when more Americans die.