Posted on 11/05/2001 7:16:37 AM PST by aculeus
Author has been well acquainted with Muslim aggressiveness for longer than he ever wanted to be.
They come to the West using our liberal immigration laws knowing full well they will impose their laws on us as soon as they are able...but if we point this out, or any view contrary to the "Islam is Peace" line, we are attacked and villified.
By the way, if you want to know if your local mosque is Wahhabi, just walk in and look around. Wahhabi mosques are NOT intensely decorated on almost every surface as are most non-Wahhabi Sunni or Shi'ite mosques. They are relatively plain.
I question his idea of a "reformation" of Islam as being the solution, however. The Christian "Reformation," including not only Protestantism but the Catholic movement known as the Counter-Reformation, basically built on things that were inherent in Christianity from the beginning, but had been somewhat obscured in the course of centuries of struggles between absolutist secular rulers and the rulers of the Church.
Free will and individual conscience? These things were part of Christianity from the very beginning. One of the most significant steps towards the equality of women, for example, was the fact that under Christianity, women had to give their consent to a marriage, and could not be married against their will. In practice, of course, they often were, especially those who were members of royal families, who seem to have been doled out to other royal houses purely in order to form alliances. But the principle was there, and was very important.
Islam has never had this principle of sovereign individuality; remember, even the name of the religion means "submission." In contrast, Christianity was spread by missionaries who suffered themselves (the martyrs), not by "missionaries" who made others suffer (as Islam has always done). Christianity was not based on the sword, either before or after the Reformation; Islam has been that way since its very beginnings.
In short, I'm not sure that any reform is possible. Perhaps ignoring it, as secularized Muslims do, is about the only solution, if one still wants to consider oneself Muslim. Or maybe it's time for these people to start searching out other possibilities.
Most are to busy disarming their citizens to pay attention to much else.
That's okay. I'm thinking of an old enemy also. The one they represent.
"The vast number of Muslims in Britain and the U.S. who are educated in Western disciplines and culture, who live by the demands of Western ways of work, are driven by a conflict between the prescriptions of Islam and the freedom to think, speak, and associate, and to be protected by democracy and Western jurisprudence. These Western Muslims will have to resolve their dilemma by seeding the reformation in Islam.That depends on who the "innocent" person is. To a Muslim, a terrorist is an innocent person."True, passages in the Quran urge believers to "kill those who join other gods with God wherever ye shall find them" and to wage war on neighboring infidels. But a hundred suras of the Quran also enjoin the faithful to tolerance: one specifically says that killing one innocent person is akin to the murder of the whole world."
Unless, of course, that terrorist is a Zionist. ;^)
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