A fair question. A muslim colleague and I were discussing all of this and he raised a valid point - there are approximately 1.5 billion muslims in the world and approximately 1.4 billion of them are not involved in terrorism.
We often lose sight of this fact (yes, including me) and tar all of them with the same brush. Our disingenuous media feeds us only the stories about Islam that they know will inflame us.
Don't misunderstand my points, here, I'm not necessarily arguing either way about the question the article raises. I do think that some balance needs to be introduced into the discussion and an awareness that, for most muslims, their daily lives are little different from ours - going to work, being able to provide for their families, etc. Most of them don't wake up in the morning wondering who they will murder today.
Just something to think about.
There are more Catholics in the world and NONE of them are involved in terrorism. Islam is violent because violence is in its scriptures and its teaching and has been since the very beginning.
Christianity, on the other hand, has the opposite at its core. Christianity was spread by people who allowed themselves to be killed to give witness to it, not people who killed on its behalf.
Sadly, however, I think countries can only be defended or rescued from Islam by force. At the time of the Crusades, there were literally millions of Europeans who had been captured, taken back to the Middle East and enslaved by the Muslims, not to mention all the Christians of the Holy Land who had been enslaved (or killed or driven out). While the Crusaders were not successful in permanently keeping Islam out of the Holy Land, they did manage to free huge numbers of enslaved people.
Most Muslims do not wake up wondering who they will kill that day, but it is part of their religion and any Muslim can be convinced or intimidated into putting it into practice, something that we will see increasingly in the future because it has been so successful in recent years. Violence is not part of the essence of Christianity, and that is the difference.
Unlike us when some nut case becomes unhinged, the silence about terrorism from those 1.4 billion is deafening.
But the majority assents to the violence carried out by the minority. Thus non-Muslims are persecuted, often with extreme violence, in every Muslim majority country in the world. The parliament of the "moderate" Muslims in Afghanistan, which we are supporting, called for the extradition and execution of a Muslim man who converted to Christianity and fled to Italy. There are regular attacks against the Christian Copts in Egypt. The Muslims of northern Nigeria frequently burn down the churches of the Christians. Etc., etc., etc. No, I will not accept the notion that most Muslims are peace loving until they demonstrate it by standing up and protecting equality of rights of non-Muslims in Muslim majority countries.
It may be true that most muslims are not hell bent on killing infidels, however, until they start speaking up in large numbers and condeming those who do all will remain suspect. I have a hard time believing any of them because the koran, which is the perfect book in their mind, tells them that it’s ok to lie. If they believe that then how am I supposed to believe a word they say?
That means 100 million of them are.
If you had 150 rattlesnakes slithering around your house, and 140 of them had been defanged, would you say "That's fine, 140 of them won't bite me", and leave them all alone?
In the Army, around 90% of our Soldiers do not engage in firing weapons at the enemy. They are instead engaged in transporting, feeding, training, supplying, and caring for the troops who DO pull the triggers.
Similarly, while most Muslims do not engage in terrorism, a large percentage DO offer aid and comfort to the terrorists, whether by financial support, verbal support, looking the other way and refusing to report those who might be engaged in violent Jihad, etc. Keep in mind that ALL Muslims are supposed to pay a tithe of 2 1/2 % of assets every year(zakat), and that a mandated proper recipient category of zakat are those who are engaged in Jihad.
Of course - that’s why the 1.4 billion stand silently by while the others do the work of which they obviously approve.
An Islamic extremist will kill you.
A ‘moderate’ muslim will stand by and watch you die.
History has many lessons to teach, don’t you think?
For the sake of debate, let’s postulate that 10% of muslims believe in violent jihad. (Most polls of muslims put the % much higher.) That means 100 million or more muslims determined to impose sharia worldwide through violence if need be.
What % of Germans were truly rabid Nazis? I don’t know, but it was enough to cause us to level entire cities.
THat’s why I say:
“Radical Islam is an insane murder cult; moderate Islam is its Trojan Horse in the West.”
Without millions of “moderate muslims” to hide among, the Hasans in America would stick out like Rudolph the Red-nosed reindeer. Radical muslims use the so-called moderates to hide behind, the way the VC used triple canopy jungle.
And we defoliated that jungle to expose the VC.