In the name of Islam

Submitted by Sidda (United States), Feb 13, 2006 at 15:50

Stop it with the crusades already. We don't care about stuff that happened 600 to 1,000 years ago. The crusades were a reaction to Muslim expansion into Europe and taking over the Holy Land. The Muslims had taken Spain and went to the gates of Vienna. The Europeans took back Europe, including Spain, and pushed the Muslims back out. But, like I said, that's old history.

Now for today. America did not attack in Afghanistan and Iraq in the name of Christianity. Afghanistan was attacked because the Taliban, who ruled in Afghanistan, harbored Al Qaeda and allowed them to openly operate terrorist training camps inside their country where terrorists were trained to attack and kill Americans. After 9/11 they were asked to turn over bin Laden and his followers and to close down the training camps or face the consequences. They chose the latter option.

Iraq is a little more complicated. That was not a retaliatory war, but a strategic one. There are arguments both pro and con as to whether Iraq was the proper battlefield. I won't go into all the arguments here, but I will say that the goal of the U.S. is to try to establish a stable, democratic government in the heart of the Middle East. If the goal were to kill as many Muslims as possible and completely decimate the infrastructure as was done in Germany during WW2, we would have just carpet bombed the place, destroyed it, and gone home. We wouldn't be there still spending billions of tax payer dollars trying to build up the country and losing soldiers' lives. Again, we are not doing anything in the name of Christianity.

Most Muslims in Iraq are now being killed by OTHER MUSLIMS. Former Baathists and foreign jihadists who have come from outside the country are blowing up the Iraqi people. They intentionally target Iraqi civilians. The jihadists claim to be doing this in the name of Islam. When they kidnap and saw the head off bound, helpless victims, they scream "Allahu Akbar" while they are doing it. It is not a religious war from our point of view, but it is from theirs.

I certainly don't think that all Muslims are extremists or terrorists. However, a significant swath of the Muslim world has been radicalized. Imams from Indonesia to Iran to Pakistan to the Middle East scream every Friday at prayer services death to America and the West, to kill the infidel. Sure, not all of them. But it doesn't need to be all. And the justification they give is in the Qur'an ACCORDING TO THEM. It is not us who are saying these things; we are repeating what your clerics are saying themselves and what they are quoting from the Qur'an. If 90% of Muslims are peaceful and non-violent and do not take to heart the over 100 verses in the Qur'an which extol Muslims to kill or subjugate non Muslims, that still leaves 10% who do. And 10% of l.6 billion people is a lot of people don't you think?

In the end, this is something that must be settled within the Muslim world. If so-called moderate Muslims are getting tired of Islam being thought of as a violent religion, they must go after the extremists amongst them and marginalize them and say that this radical religious ideology has no place in the modern 21st century. So far that has not happened.

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