Like many people here I have, in fact, read the koran. I did so while living in a middle eastern country.
It struck me then, that it was a series of sermons delivered in war-time, and as a result, its overall tone was extremely militarist. Many of the sermons seem to have been delivered precisely on the eve of battle.
By making it their central scripture, they have created a religion that bears superficial resemblance to the “abrahamic” religions but the deeper you go and the more devout you are the more accepting you are of violence and contempt toward non-believers. Indeed, the more violent and contemptuous you are of anyone who steps out of line.
Reading Susan’s comments on her blog page makes it pretty evident that she knows little or nothing at all about Islam. She is a determined apologist for something she knows little or nothing about.
She is trying to find an equivalence between Islam and the other religions, for what purpose? To excuse, evidently, what this man and a long line of other men just like him have done. And to disarm us and make any response impossible.
Are we going to attack indiscriminately all muslims in response to this? When have we ever? This is something that muslim jihadists do. We have never done this. We quite clearly see that not all muslims are jihadists; we have allied ourselves with muslims throughout the theater and are building muslim armies to go after them. We are the ones who see the distinction, and as such we don’t have to make excuses for jihadists. No, all muslims aren’t jihadists; but the jihadists are muslim and very devoutly so. The fact that she doesn’t want to see it speaks more about her than it does about anything she writes about.
She seems afraid if we can find wrong in Islam we can find wrong in Christianity as well. They both lead to dogmatism if not moderated, most “social” groups that have committed major wrongs have done so under the guise of “exceptionalism” or “religion” or a notion of “utopia”. Dogmatists are everywhere and the job of them and their groups are to move “goldman sachs” and the “federal reserve” and the socialist claptrap off the front page, they need nut jobs like this guy to distract people from the real battle against the federal reserve and the religion they practice of fundamentalist materialism throug h metaphysical mumbo jumbo.
The people that are running this society are sociopaths and this man just a tool, while they chemically poison us people focus all their attention on who has the right religious point of view or political beliefs, they also rob us blind and run massive deficits in order to manipulate us all, this guy just bought into the religious mumbo jumbo of Islam. but the elites love it when this stuff happens then they can call for ever more restrictions on “our” freedoms we share and express that they resent and want to take away from us, by their tolerance of these nuts they use them to justify restricting us, that maybe HOW this killer came to be.
Very well put. One author I have read extensively is Bernard Lewis, who has written some GREAT books on Islam. He is considered to be one of the foremost authorities on Islam in the West, and is able to discuss it logically and without emotional baggage. The two books of his I found most informative and interesting is “What Went Wrong?” and “The Crisis of Islam”.
The fact that Noam Chomsky hates him and that Dick Cheney likes him is just icing on the cake.