Posted on 05/08/2015 10:17:24 AM PDT by RoosterRedux
ets be clear: The great freak-out over Pamela Gellers draw Muhammad contest isnt about love for Islam or for robust and respectful religious pluralism. Indeed, many of those expressing anguish over blasphemy against Islam show no such concern over even the most vile attacks on the Christian faith. Beyond that, theyre among the leaders in movements designed to banish religious liberty including Muslim religious liberty to the margins of American life. Instead, the fury against Pamela Geller is motivated mostly by fear by the understanding that there are indeed many, many Muslims who believe that blasphemy should be punished with death, and who put that belief into practice. Its motivated by the fear that our alliances with even friendly Muslim states and allied Muslim militias are so fragile that something so insignificant as a cartoon would drive them either to neutrality or straight into the arms of ISIS.
Thats why even the military brass will do something so unusual as call a fringe pastor of a tiny little church to beg him not to post a YouTube video. Thats why the president of the United States ostensibly the most powerful man in the world will personally appeal to that same pastor not to burn a Koran. They know that hundreds of millions of Muslims are not moderate by any reasonable definition of that word, and they will,in fact, allow themselves to be provoked by even the most insignificant and small-scale act of religious satire or defiance. After all, there are Muslim communities that will gladly burn Christians alive to punish even rumored blasphemy.
A house divided against itself, yet it still stands. We should be glad when they fight each other.
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