Ed Nur's confusion

Submitted by Merl Francis Kimmel (United States), Jan 29, 2006 at 20:34

Dear Ed Nur:

Where do I begin? You are as biased in favor of Islam and Muslims as can be. You mention that Muslims hate America, among other reasons, because 1) we have occupied Afghanistan and Iraq; 2) America supports Israeli occupation of Muslim Palestine; 3) we supported the creation of a Christian East Timor; 4) America supports Russia and China in their suppression of their Muslim populations; 5) we support "apostate" (your word not mine) governments in places like the UAE and Kuwait.

My response to you would be 1) Afghanistan and Iraq were hell holes before America arrived. Women were treated like slaves by the Taliban and in Iraq Saddam and his henchmen used rape as a method of control. People in general lived in fear with freedoms of various kinds virtually nonexistent. Have we had to kill Afghanis and Iraqis to change these wretched countries?

Of course. Civilization must not only be sophisticated but muscular. It is a very sad but true fact that political entities led by barbarians will only cease to be barbaric when force is used by civilization. Thousands upon thousands of German women and children died because of American bombing of Hitler's Germany.

But where does the fault lie for this? Not with America but with the Nazis, that's where. 2) America supports Israel because it is the only true democracy in the Middle East. The basic problem here is that from the 1920s onwards Arabs have taken the position that they get everything and the Jews get nothing. Haj Amin al-Husseini, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and a great admirer of Hitler, started this hatred towards Jews and any Arab moderate who disagreed and extened a hand of friendship to Jews was killed by his own kind. Old King Abdullah of Jordan and Anwar Sadat of Egypt are just two of the more prominent examples here.

As for Muslim Palestine, Arabs languished for centuries under Ottoman rule there and elsewhere, only got the chance for their own countries because of Allied victory against the Central Powers and had no more right to have a nation in Palestine than the Jews who, from the late nineteenth century onwards, filtered back into Palestine and bought, not stole, land from absentee Arab landlords. 3) America supported East Timor because Muslims, once again, engaged in horrible treatment of non-Muslims, this time the inhabitants of one half of one Indonesian island. 4) America has no control over what Russia and China do within their own borders. What, exactly, would you have us do?

I don't deny that Muslims have been mistreated by Russia and China over the years, but outright condemnation by America would achieve nothing and it is not as though Muslims are entirely guiltless in terrorism within Russian and Chinese borders. 5) What choice do we usually have but to support the status quo in countries across the world? Kuwait is not my idea of an ideal country but I'd sooner live there or in the UAE than in Saddam's Iraq or the Taliban's Afghanistan and I'd bet you would too. Sure it would be better if Kuwait and other countries in the Middle East were entirely free, but America can't solve every problem and the dearth of freedom in any Muslim country functions as a commentary on Islam, or haven't you noticed?

Finally, one could argue, and I would certainly do so, that America has saved more Muslims in the last fifteen years than any other power on earth. Whether it was stopping the rape of Kuwait by that butcher in Baghdad, coming to the aid of Muslims in Bosnia or maintaining a no-fly zone in northern Iraq in the 1990s so that Kurdish Muslims would not suffer the wrath of a horrible man, America has done more for Muslims than any Muslim country on the planet. And what is the response from most Muslims? Exactly yours----ingratitude, cluelessness, impenetrable ignorance. I'm finished here.

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