Islamophobic With Cause

Submitted by Lee D. Cary (United States), Oct 25, 2005 at 14:37

At the pedestrian level in the West, "Islamophobia" applies. We in the West are ever more suspicious of a religion that tolerates a violent, radical wing. We, many of us - perhaps most, see "moderate" Islam as the enabling family members of a alcoholic who are unwilling to intervene. If Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and other voices of the Christian far right advocated and engaged in violence against anyone, the rest of the Christian community would fix the problem.

Islam is clearly unwilling to reign in its radical wing. Some ask - If willing, are they even able? Of course. Some are surely afraid, but many are complicit by rendering tacit support of their violent brethren. When, at the end of WWII, the German people claimed to be ignorant of what was happening in the death camps, we looked, and still do, on that disclaimer with deep skepticism. At the minimum, the people enabled it to happen.

Sooner or later, "moderate" Islam must find the means to confront it's radical wing. If not, it too will be, sadly, affected by an inevitable confligration that is the logical outcome of escalating violence. In the Cold War, the old USSR, along with the US, faced potential mass destruction, yet only a small precentage of Soviets were members of the Party. Today, radical Islam is the "Party" of contemporay Islam - despite all the politically correct disclaimers to the contrary from those of us in the West who wish it were not so.

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