13 August 2010 Something happening here What it is ain’t exactly clear

13 August 2010 Something happening here What it is ain’t exactly clear


Unfortunately, it is all too clear these days.

“United States of Islamophobia?

By Arsalan Iftikhar, Special to CNN

August 13, 2010 9:09 a.m. EDT”

http://us.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/08/12/iftikhar.islamaphobia/index.html?hpt=C2

“as author and journalist Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic rightfully noted: "Americans who seek the marginalization of Muslims in this country are unwittingly doing the work of Islamist extremists. ... We must do everything possible to avoid giving them propaganda victories in their attempt to create a cosmic war between Judeo-Christian civilization and Muslim civilization. ...The fight is not between the West and Islam."

Reader comments from the article above include:

“wwjnd

Any chance we could compromise? Stop blowing yourselves up to harm others, stop murdering, flying planes into buildings, oppressing your women, whipping women for drinking in public, freaking out over cartoons, harvesting opium, and mooching off of the US while you fun jihad against us, and you can go ahead an open your mosque.

• David1154

I don't recall "Christian Extremists" flying airplanes into the WTC, or the Pentagon, or bombing embassies, or being human bombs, or any of the myriad actions that Islam is so proud of. You need to remember how Muslims were dancing in the streets after the events of 9/11.





Also, would you care to provide some evidence that a large majority of our forefathers were deists, agnostics, and atheists? Or is that just an assumption on your part?

• kontrax

This suicidal American obsession with political correctness will be the death of this nation. I keep hearing the liberals say we are not at war with Muslims. Who else are we at war with? Who else has attacked us? Whose countries have we recently invaded and are we now occupying? Where was the peace-loving Muslim outrage with each attack on the U.S.? I seem to recall dancing and rejoicing in the streets - by Muslims. Not only do I not want mosques - I don't want Muslims in our country! Send them back to their wonderful homelands where they can wear burkhas and practice sharia law”



The CNN article cited above is well written and seems to be the response of a learned American citizen who happens to be Moslem. His conclusion is one that I would very much like to be correct. We, Americans, or the West, don’t need to be engaged in a cultural conflict that has become a vicious shooting war. The various urban attacks upon European and U.S. targets, the embassies, war ships, barracks attacked by suicide and other terrorist bombers, and the kidnappings and brutal murders of journalists, aid workers, soldiers, and others, make it difficult to remember that we are being attacked by a group of fundamentalists, not by nations.

I’m able to separate the actions of religious fanatics from the actions of nations. It would be great if we could point to one nation and define it as the source and support of all ant-Western activity. But fundamentalist Moslems come from all sects. Cults, tribes, and nations. They often come from the West, radicalized by local recruiters using web sites to troll for the disaffected and unhappy immigrants and children of immigrants who can be found in the urban enclaves of European cities and in the U.S. as well. Saudi Arabia exports Wahabi Islam, vicious, hate-filled, and anti-Western. The tribal lands of Afghanistan and Pakistan provide training grounds and refuge for jihadis from many nations. So does the failed state of Somalia. But despite our invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, military action against a nation is simply a puppet show and waste of the lives of our troops. Bullets and bombs won’t kill cults.

Islam is in need of reform, the process undergone by Judaism and Christianity. It needs to separate the literalists from those who have noticed the advance of science, culture, and politics to a point beyond the 7th century. It is time for reformers to arise from within Islam and the West may be the best place for that, a place with religious freedoms, freedom of speech, and no state religion, no interwoven government and church/mosque. It will not arise in the Arab lands and it will not arise in the Asian “Stans.”

Looking at the bulk of reader comments posted on CNN’s site, the average respondent differs little from the un-reformed Moslems who populate the tribal areas of Afghanistan. Our U.S. citizens fail to realize that they are the mirror image of the people they are complaining about.

A visit to any ER on a weekend will find a steady stream of battered women who’s crime was to be living with, perhaps married to, someone as poorly equipped for modern civilization as the villagers and Taliban of Afghanistan. They will tell you that their male overlords see no reason for them to attend school. They will tell you that their churches tell them to be submissive to their husbands, just as does Islam. That same ER visit will find men whose only response to conflict is to retreat to drugs and violence.

The period since the U.S. became a nation does not provide a picture of civilized and peaceful religion. The churches here have supported slavery, have supported the marriage of adult males to children, have actively campaigned against civil rights for all citizens, have demonized Black Americans, gay Americans, and have supported forced gestation of unwanted children by rape victims. Some Christian cults in this nation have actively championed murder of physicians and other health care providers. Some churches have harbored those who bomb clinics. Others have harbored illegal immigrants because of their particular cult memberships.

In short, the people commenting above are a small sample of an increasingly ugly part of our population. They are willing to disenfranchise part of our citizenry, to support a theocracy and destroy the 1st and 14th amendments while bring forth a Christian theocracy as mean-spirited and backward as the Wahabi and the Taliban.

As an American citizen, they embarrass me. As a member of a minority religion, they make me think of Germany in 1930. As someone who believes in the dream that America still represents for many people around the world, they sadden me.



Pears are poaching on the stovetop. Tomorrow we will dine on linguini with white clam sauce, salad, and garlic toast. I’m looking forward to an enjoyable weekend.

Shabbat Shalom!