[goldstategop]

The ordinary everyday encounter betwen Muslix taxi drivers and non-Muslim customers provides a revealing insight into Muslim regard for non-Muslims: the absence of tolerance for the Other's religious beliefs or the absence of them. One can't imagine the most pious Jew or Christian imposing their religious beliefs on others but Muslims insist non-Muslims observe Islamic beliefs whether they want or not. That is why there's a lot more to be learned as Dennis Prager notes from how Muslim taxi drivers treat non-Muslim customers than from Muslim terrorists who blow infidels up. The difference in attitude towards non-Muslims then is merely one of means as opposed to principle. Which is why its so disturbing to witness the repeated imposition of Muslim beliefs on those who want nothing to do with Islam in what are supposed to be free societies.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus

[DB]

Who owns the taxi?

If it is the driver's car then fine. Let them starve.

If it is a company car that doesn't share the Muslim's beliefs then fire them. Labor laws darn well better not prevent them from being fired. They are not performing their job function. No different than a Mormon trying to get a job as a bar tender and refusing to serve alcohol...

[Kozak]

but about decent every day Muslims

The phrase "decent Muslim" is an oxymoron.....

[MonroeDNA]

I think everyone should bring bottles of alcohol to taxi stands.

Then again, I see no difference between this and pharmacists who refuse to give out RU-486, or such things.

[nathanbedford]

One reason that Dennis Prager is such an effective writer is that he is a clear thinker. So, by simple illustration, someone with a New Testament heritage might say, with a parable from everyday life, Prager conveys deeper meanings in digestable doses.

So the parable of the taxi driver teaches us that Islam has yet to taste of the Scottish Enlightenment. No Enlightenment means no tolerance, no notion that tolerance is essential to civilization.

What are we to do with this insight? If you are a rabid Muslim hater (there are such people after all) you are inclined to say, "see, I told you so, there is no dealing with these people, negotiation means appeasement and appeasement means only defeat, Islam must be defeated which means that Islam must be annihilated." If you are a liberal, you react in horror to such a stance, you call it the equivalent of racism, and proclaim that the root causes of Muslim intolerance must be dealt with. If you are a conservative, you reject the first as morally wrong and physically impossible (there are after all 1.4 billion Muslims in the world), and the second as impractical (we are in a war in which crazed Islamo- fundamentalists would cheerfully blow up or cities and murder us by the millions and there is not that much time or money or even patience in the enlightened world to get the job done).

So what is the conservative solution? The problem is that the world of Islam is so intolerant that it is dangerous and mortally dangerous at that to our civilization, our democracy, and our children's very lives. But the Muslim does not see himself as unenlightened. He is sure he is possessed of all of the Enlightenment there is to have and it is divine enlightenment. He denies that he is intolerant and insists that he is righteous. There is no scientific method, no idea of the marketplace of ideas, no receptivity. Just as the medicine of oncology cannot kill the cancerous cell if it cannot gain entry, so the intolerant Muslim cannot hear if he will not listen.

The honest truth is that there is no conservative solution to this dilemma. If the problem were an incorrigible criminal, conservatives would know what to do: lock him up, quarantine him. But we are dealing with a fifth of the planet here. There is an entity which showed itself quite capable of dealing with huge portions of the world's population who were ignorant, violent, and in many cases, Muslim and that entity was the British Empire operating in all the glory of its enlightened imperialist age. How did the thin red line manage the uncivilized world so successfully for so long until the royal Navy passed the baton to the American Navy?

Well, they did not do it the French way, the Brits did not go native. For the most part, they maintained their standards, they provided an efficient bureaucracy, a rule of law, and an essentially honest administration. In short, they operated within the lights of their own enlightenment. The caricature of the British colonialist of the Victorian age is of an Englishman so insular and so arrogant that he was incapable of understanding or adapting to local conditions and cultures even to the extent that he would go out into the midday sun. This is wholly unfair and a misreading of history. In fact the Brits were quite observant and really good listeners. Clive did not conquer India with only 800 men by overwhelming millions, he achieved this stupendous victory by setting his enemies against each other. He read each faction carefully and manipulated them.

I have posted time and again on these threads my belief that ultimately this intergenerational, world war against 1.4 billion Muslims for the very survival of our civilization and our democracy and our children's lives must be lost if it is not won by Muslims themselves. We must become as wily as the British and mobilize what is sane in the Muslim world to save us because they must save themselves.

But in the long haul it is only Muslims who have the keys to their brothers. If the medicine is to kill the cancerous cells in the body Islam, the medicine must somehow find the portal into the cell. We cannot enlighten our taxi driver by exhorting him to be enlightened. He is deaf and blind to these Western ideas. He does not feel himself any bit enlightened but rather threatened. He is, however, likely to be receptive to ideas which are couched in the language and the idiom of Islam. Like Clive, we had better learn the idiom.

[Cronos]

"decent" "every day Muslims"

Oxymoron..

[Witch-king of Angmar]

Next thing you know they won't let in women that do not wear a burkha. They must not be allowed to get away with this!

[MaDeuce]

...We are not talking here about Muslim fanatics or Muslim terrorists, but about decent every day Muslims.

No such 'animal' exists.

[tkathy]

Today's taxi drivers may well be tomorrow's suicide murderers. The taxi drivers may talk and smile during the day, while plotting to kill us all at night.

[dennisw]

excellent!!!

[SIRTRIS]

In many Muslim countries it is a crime to practice the faith of Christianity. We need not tolerate the intolerant?

[teenyelliott]

I had the luxury of staying at an extended stay hotel in Rochester, MN, which is right outside of Minn/St. Paul.

I felt like a foreigner in my own country. The place is like a mini Middle East, with burka wearing women, men wearing the head coverings and carrying rugs, getting on their knees praying, and so forth.

I, as an American woman wearing t-shirts and shorts, have never felt so uncomfortable in my life. In my own country.

If looks could kill, I'da been a dead woman.

[bruin66]

Prager == Clarity