I hear you - but I also think we chased a lot of them away. In 2000 Many moslems were JUST beginning to flex political muscles. They had just gotten over being the “untrustworthy other” and were starting to participate in debates about just such things as you mentioned. Then 9/11 happened and the rest is history.
In the meantime I can’t say I blame them for working with Democrats. You work with the people that don’t call you walking extensions of the will of Satan or do darned fool things like hold monthly pig races and hot-dog cookouts next to the new mosque. (NO joke. That happens here in Houston. Katy, TX as well.) Why would they want to work with people that are obnoxious to them? I also worked with Democrats for a while for similar reasons. The local republican party was unwilling to work with me and if I wanted to get ANYTHING done on the local level I had to work with Democrats because single-issue republicans in my area flatly refused to work with me.
Give them space and some quiet respect and maybe more of them will go out and participate in those causes. They are the only reliable opposition to abortion in the UN for example.
Of course, which is why rednecks are mostly Republican now.
or do darned fool things like hold monthly pig races and hot-dog cookouts next to the new mosque. (NO joke. That happens here in Houston. Katy, TX as well.) Why would they want to work with people that are obnoxious to them? I also worked with Democrats for a while for similar reasons. The local republican party was unwilling to work with me and if I wanted to get ANYTHING done on the local level I had to work with Democrats because single-issue republicans in my area flatly refused to work with me.
Though I am a fanatical Republican whose Republicanism goes all the way back to the Civil War--and who therefore maintains a hatred of the Democrat party that most people today would not be able to understand--I can understand what you are saying, though I am surprised at your remark about "single issue" Republicans.
The fact is that most so-called "single issues" are anything but. We live in a country and at a time where, based on a politician's position on one single issue, one may almost without error deduce his position on every other issue. For example, if one believes in affirmative action for Black Americans, he is almost sure to be in favor of "gay rights," and if he is an advocate of "the right to life," he is almost surely to be a dogmatic Randian "root hog or die" capitalist.
While, as a repentant ex-Bircher, I am no fan of conspiracy theory, there is nonetheless something very strange in all this creating and prolonging of enmities among people that is very Hegelian. I don't suppose you read my post from yesterday comparing American politics to pro wrestling?
Sure, right after they repudiate their murderous barbaric religion.
Would you give quiet respect to a member of the Thuggee strangler cult? Would you give quiet respect to an Aztec cannibal priest of Tlaloc?
Islam is right up there with those two in its hatred of infidels and murderous intentions towards you (the infidel).