Posted on 09/01/2007 5:24:11 AM PDT by Clive
As another anniversary of the terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington approaches it can be said no other subject during this period has been discussed as widely as Islam and Muslims.
Yet much about both remains clouded.
The Muslim world is not a monolith, and Muslim understanding of their faith-tradition -- Islam -- in lacking a centre analogous to the Vatican, remains widely dispersed.
The differences among Muslims on how the Koran should be read and Islam practised reach back to the earliest years of Muslim history and have been the source of much internal conflict. These differences are compounded by the convulsions in varying degrees the Muslim world is experiencing presently from the effects of the fast moving global economy.
The internal conflicts among Muslims were of little concern to others until very recently. Since Sept. 11, 2001, understanding the Muslim world's internal map has become vital to the West for its own security interests.
Muslims ethnically are a diverse people, and Islam is no more an Arab religion than Christianity is a Jewish heresy. More than 80% of over one billion Muslims are non-Arabs, and most Muslims are located in south and southeast Asia.
Muslims in Indonesia, India, Turkey and Malaysia, for instance, are citizens of countries in varying degrees democratic and embracing of the modern world.
Muslims in India have shown how Islam is not less adaptive to democracy than Christianity and Judaism, and a recent delegation of senior Muslim religious leaders from India reciprocated the visit of Chief Rabbi Yonah Metzger in a significant gesture by journeying to Israel.
Turkey was an ally of the West through the Cold War, fought alongside Americans in Korea, and is a strategic partner with Israel.
Abdurrahman Wahid, former democratically elected president of Indonesia and head of the world's largest Muslim organization -- Nahdatul Ulama -- is an outspoken friend of the West, Israel, Jews and Christians.
It is mostly the Arab world including Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, where religious extremism and political tyranny in a volatile mix have reduced the greater Middle East into a political wasteland, and the internal quarrels of a broken civilization most acute here have spilled over into Europe and beyond.
Saudi Arabia is the Muslim world's heart of darkness, though the clout from oil-income gives the Saudis an undeserved influence among the majority Sunni Muslims.
Three decades of Saudi cult of Wahhabism -- considered until lately by most Muslims as bigotry and ignorance of desert nomads -- preached in mosques and religious schools across the Muslim world, including Muslim enclaves in the West, have taken its toll.
Saudi bigotry financed by oil-wealth has pushed a large segment of the Muslim population on a reverse course of violence and fanaticism directed against the modern world and Muslims who seek to be reconciled with it.
SAUDI BIGOTRY
The full effect of Saudi bigotry and Iranian Shiite fanaticism is on display in Iraq, the Muslim land most broken by tyranny. Here the quarrel between tyranny and freedom is fully unmasked.
The convulsions inside the Muslim world are no longer a local affair. And the world's awakening to the perils of Muslim quarrels has made many in the West aware that defeating Muslim extremism is as vital for their security as helping Muslims make the transition to the modern world.
You’re a dope. Indonesia is the world’s largest Muslim nation. They drink alcohol and women work and walk around uncovered. Turkey is another example.
You still won’t answer the question, I guess because you’re a coward; what do you think of the American Muslim soldiers defending their country?
I did answer the question. Indonesia persecutes other religions, having killed over 8,000 Christians in the last decade. Go back to DU.
No, you didn’t answer the question. And I’d love to see your evidence of Christians being killed in Indonesia. By the government? You’re on drugs.
Since you won’t answer the question, I’ll guess your answer. You believe that American Muslim servicemen are scum.
You’re an anti-American louse.
> ISLAM is a Political system MASQUERADING as a religion.
A statement of the obvious to everyone except liberals.
Wow. If I have to respond to everything you get wrong this is going to turn into a full time job.
I wasn’t kidding about your conceit. You really do shame yourself by trying to reference concepts you obviously know very little about. Watching you try to argue logically is like listening to a young person refer to San Tropez, Tucson, or Albuquerque but pronouncing them phonetically.
And it’s very obvious you confused some of the concepts you learned because “special pleading” (the mainstay of your entire line of argument) is a fallacy, not a tactic.
Let’s see. Where to start.
How about the BEGINNING!
Kabuki dance is a well known euphemism, but even if it isn’t common knowledge in the trailer park a quick trip to google would have told you what it means.
You did NOT make an inductive argument based on your experience. You made a fallacious argument based on your experience, because that experience constitutes “anecdotal” evidence, not empirical evidence.
The “deductive” argument you find so objectionable was a play on words that obviously went right over you. I already explained it and will not do so again because your aforementioned special pleading would make the explaination moot.
My inductive argument is sound in that it is NOT based on “personal experience,” but on news coverage. The general lack of support for American culture from American muslims is a WELL documented phenomena. I suppose you could argue the point if you are the sort to deny the moon landing (which I don’t doubt you are).
Being that all your premises are pitifully flawed, your conclusion is obviously incorrect.
Finally, I am very sorry you have so much trouble with my “fancy words and phrases,” but have you ever considered the possibility you’re just not smart enough to have an opinion?
Try googling "schoolgirls, beheading" and you'll see the evidence.
And for the record...I believe American muslim servicemen are being watched VERY closely by their peers.
The big problem with you is you think every line of multi-culti crap that's been sold in modern times is the definition of American.
Burning a flag IS NOT a speech, and all the veterans that want to kick the snot out of flag burners are NOT bigots, fascists, or anti-American.
Islam is a fabricated delusion.
I would bet that number is well under 100.
Right now there are over two dozen from Dearborn alone. Over the course of the past 50 years, there have been many dozens more.
“The number of Muslims in the U.S. military is hard to estimate. Estimates vary from 4,000 to more than 12,000.”
See http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/attack/43546_chaplains20.shtml
and,
“Out of the 1.4 million service men and women serving actively in the American military, an estimated 3,700 are Muslim, according to the Department of Defense.”
http://www.nysun.com/article/31393
They can’t be true Muslims if they are fighting for the ‘Great Satan’.
Like IRAQI FORCES?
ISLAM is a Political system MASQUERADING as a religion.
That’s what we truly need to understand.
I have been saying that also. It needs to be shouted from the rooftops! Islam is NOT a religion. Never has been.
It would be something more like a coprolith.
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