Posted on 01/26/2007 9:16:25 AM PST by AdamSmithWasRight
As I read the news day in and day out from my perspective of being on the inside looking out, I look at my own home and couldn't be any more embarrassed than I currently am. It has been compounded from 9/11 by constant images and stories in the media about the actions of the Muslim community.
I must admit to myself if I was on the outside looking in I would probably look at myself in the same way so many others do. If all I saw were nihilistic thugs raping, robbing, murdering, and littering the streets of the world with the bodies of innocent people I wouldn't know what else to think of this group of people for religion.
As I now sit inside of the United States I find myself looking at this house in two perspectives. At times from the inside looking out and wanting to escape for this image that has haunts me day in and day out but also at times from the outside looking in. It is these proud patriotic times when religion takes the passenger seat or well I should say, isn't even in the car, that I look at that house and think, "Don't you people get it???"
At moments like this I realize and force myself to accept the reality that the real problem here is the Muslim community itself. It is no longer the fundamentalsits or Al-Qaeda alone, rather the very community itself that has failed to deliver or even show an attempt to remedy this nihilistic ideology within their ranks. As an American but also as a Muslim I would like to convey my most sincere apologies although I know to most this are just empty words in light of the death and injury of so many. For most we have reached a point where apologies and words will do nothing but further agitate the situation. Rather what is needed is action.
It is this which I do recognize and wish deliver, but I realize that I can only do this with help from others. I would hope that the American people, my brothers and sisters, would not so easily give up on the Bush doctrine of changing the face of the middle east where this dangerous threat to world civility and humanity is found. If we hope to find change I believe we can only find it in the overthrowing and or absolute destruction of the very regimes and elements that support this authoritarinism from within their midst. As long as we hold on to the Bush doctrine I honestly believe that we can one day watch the purple fingers of freedom wave from Morocco to Indonesia.
Until that day, if it comes, I apologize my friends and ask you to stick with the President and his vision for a new middle east.
Captured by the British, yes, they would have been tried and hung for treason. But their wives and children would not have been physically harmed. The Founders didn't have to worry about same crazy in their own midst shooting them in the back or cutting their kids heads off.
Comparing King George with Bin Laden is kind of simplistic.
Wow...the three day delay in replying to me is impressive. I usually don't bother responding to someone after that long. Especially if the best I can come up with is something as lame as what you said.
It may be simplistic, but it is not shallow. I did not really appreciate the label, nor in the context that I used it, completely invalid.
The effects of Islamofacism on their children will be every bit as invasive as the invasive effects of British Tyranny on the descendents of the founding fathers.
But that is not the point. The point is, that the time is long overdue for moderate muslims (and I still do believe they are out there) get off of their asses and take back their religion from those who have taken it from them, if that is not too simplistic a way to word it.
Do you agree or disagree with this statement?
Well, I try to be courteous to others. Which is something you should learn.
Reread some of your pithy comments for examples of lame. What a joke.
I believe that Islam is incompatible with the American political system as it exists today. American political concepts such as freedom of speech, assembly, religion, etc. are antithetical to Islam, and Islam is antithetical to those concepts. There are other non-Christian religions which can blend in just fine - Buddhism for example. Islam cannot...
This is a subtle point, lost on those whose intellectual framework of freedom consists of, "On yeah? You can't make me!"
Unfortunately, legalism is the only framework they possess.
In general, I agree, but I think you make it sound easier than what will be considering the extent the extremists with the cooperation of Western leftists "own" the major institutions of that religion.
On the following... well, what can I say?
The effects of Islamofacism on their children will be every bit as invasive as the invasive effects of British Tyranny on the descendents of the founding fathers.
The "British Tyranny" would have resulted in exactly what for the descendants of the Founders? They would have ended up like Canadians or Australians?
It's a poor analogy that trivializes the very real danger to all of civilization posed by radical Islam.
We wouldn't be Americans, there wouldn't have BEEN an America...and we might very well be speaking German or Russian and all be living in a Nazi or Communist empire.
Yeah, I guess I do make it sound easier than it would be. In my experience, I have found that people who enact change are the ones who don't wring their hands over the "nuances" but instead get to work fixing the problem. I don't make "perfection the enemy of action". I will throw my lot in with those people.
Pure conjecture. There would have still been a continent here, it would have still been settled just as Canada and Australia were and if it had been part of the British Commonwealth as they were, and with British power far more than what they actually possessed, perhaps those World Wars would have never happened. If that's the case, the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia or rise of the Nazis in post-war Germany never happen either.
That is also pure conjecture of course, but what is not conjecture is that living under King George, the British Parliament, and British Common Law was infinitely preferable to living under some mad Mullah and 7th Century Islamic law.
You can go off in the weeds on this if you want. I am not interested, because I do not think it addresses the heart of the matter.
You and I disagree on a basic point, which has nothing to do, or very little with the discussion at hand.
You excuse or explain the inaction and silence of moderate muslims both in this country and around the world by stating their personal safety and that of their families is at risk.
I discount that rationale. They must either disown the radical factions, or they must disown the religion.
If the 1.5 Billion muslims around the world cannot disown the radical Islamists who make up some percentage of their population, then they need to either splinter off to their own faction or disown the religion itself.
They key point is that if it is true that there are moderate muslims (and there are some who think that cannot be the case) and their tongues are being held hostage against their will due to coercive threats against their lives, then we will have no choice but to eventually lump them in together with the radical Islamists. It is already happening. They DO have a stake in it, and they aren't going to be able to protect themselves by closing their eyes, sticking their heads in the sand and saying they were forced to remain silent.
Especially not in THIS country.
When we in this country suffer a hundred thousand or 5 million dead Americans in one day, the moderate muslims out there who know (and had known) who the perpetrators are and where they live, will not have the luxury of being able to say "It wasn't me! It wasn't MY religion!" They are going to suffer along with the radicals.
Nobody is going to give a damn about what they thought leading up to the event. Germans could have done something about Hitler and his thugs leading up to World War II. Instead, they handed power to Hitler on a platter and gave him carte blanche to do as he wished. After Germany was destroyed and the German people were painted with a stain that will last as long as people remember the barbarity of the holocaust, it makes no difference if Germans who lived in those times say "I did not support Hitler and what he did." The fact that they did NOTHING paints them with the same brush as the Nazis.
There may come a time in the future where you will not be able to find a single Muslim who will say "I supported the radical Islamofacists who planted the bomb that killed millions of people".
But, in the future, it is entirely possible you will for damned sure hear people disowning the radical islamists saying they never agreed with them. "It wasn't me...I was not one of them."
But their silence will damn them all the same. Action when it counts is their only hope.
On that, we can agree. But I only ask you to put yourself in the moderates position of opposing people who will, (and have) killed their own sisters over 'dishonor' and would treat anyone outside the family even worse.
We need to find a way to give the moderates a voice without asking that they all become targets. If you have any ideas on how to do that, I'd be glad to hear them but just telling people they need to be John Wayne ain't going to work.
I don't think speaking out against the slaughter of innocent civilians is the sole province of John Wayne.
You want people to put their lives on the line while the greater society (us and our institutions) refuses to even acknowledge there is a problem for their safety and others (the left) works with the radicals to keep them quiet.
I want them to speak out too... but we have to give them cover and I see no indication we are willing to do so.
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