Listening for Islam's silent majority: "where are the moderate Muslims?"

Christian Science Monitor ^ | Monday, November 5, 2001 | By Peter Ford

[Rome2000]

Ataturk was certainly anti-western in other respects

The Turks woke up one day and were told by their government that rags would no longer be acceptable as headwear, and women would now wear dresses and men ties.

Anybody who didn't like it was killed.

The rest of the region is going to be subjected to the same in the near future.

The last group of SOB's that tried the kamikazee bit on us are now so westernized that their kids beat the US in the Little League World Series.

conservatives now have a blind faith in social engineering

Beam me up.

[Anamensis]

You know, when you think about it, we really tend to treat religion as race. You know and I know what I mean by "lapsed Catholic" or "nominal Muslim" or "technically Jewish"... I mean, a person can be raised Christian and eventually decide that the story is not believable, but their values are still overall faintly Christian. It's like a residue that remains. But since, particularly in the case of Isl and Chrs, the essential component is BELIEF, you'd think that we'd have a way of designating people-who-were-raised-Christian/Islamic/Jewish-but-don't-actually-believe/practice as opposed to people-who-were-raised-C/I/J-and-still-b/p as opposed to converts from one to the other. But we don't.

I was arguing with some woman at a party shortly after 9/11 and I made a reference to Islam as "violent" and she jumped up, cried "my brother is muslim!!!" and left the party in a huff. (Her "brother" is an adoptee from Tibet, taken on as a foster "kid" in his late teens.) Later, her husband said "well, she's worried about him, and he says he has been getting some grief from people about being muslim, but he can't help it." I said, "He can choose to be or not be muslim." And the husband said, "Well, he was born and raised muslim." I said, "It's not a blood type, he has a choice." And the guy looked startled to remember that. Isn't that weird?

[Captain Kirk]

Beam me up eh? Ah, the hubris of conservative social engineers. You are heading for a big fall my friend!

Your Turkish example is not convincing. As I said before, the Turkish revolution was a revolution from below. It was not imposed by outsiders. Had outsiders engineered it, it would have ended in a backlash as happened under the Shah.

At the same time, the Turkish revolution also had its uglier side which you conveniently ignore including the expulsion of millions of Greek Christians and the extermination of an equal number of Armenians. As I said before, Islam can only be changed from within and it may take hundres of years. I know one thing: the process will only be slowed down if bumbling conservative social engineers and utopians get involved.

[FITZ]

Yes that's weird. It's a mindset like being a Nazi or Communist too. Christians and Jews are more inclined to accept separation of Church and State but that isn't acceptable in Islam. Sharia is as much a part of that faith as the Koran itself is so Islam is more a political system than it is a religion.