Double standard

Submitted by Cynthia Curran (United States), Sep 28, 2002 at 03:39

Islam and Muslims are seen as sacred on most campuses. If a student is study medieval history--the western Christians are the bad guys and the Muslims are the good guys. What is hinted at but rarely discussed is that Islam spread thru military conquest thru the middle east and north Africia and Spain. Also, the crusades started because the Muslims kept on expanding their terrorities. The Byzantine emperor called for helped from the west, and also, Muslims were harrassing Christian patrons in Palestine. Yet a complex period of medieval history where there was violence on all sides is mainly seen as the fault of western Christians.

In today's world, many professors paint the Jews and Israel as the bad guys --another complex situation where the Jews are always seen as fault. The reason that professors view Islam as the good religion is that Chirstians and Jews belong to the rich west and Islam comes from non-western parts of the world or very poor places like Sudan.

Sudan is another example of one of the worst assaults on Christians since the murder of several Christians by Turks at the beginning of the 20th century.

In contrst to Israeli, in certain Muslim states, Jews, Christians and other religions have very limited freedoms and can be subject to imprisonment and sometimes death.

This subject is not discussed in most Middle Eastern study classes either.

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