Reactionaries

Submitted by Safraz (United States), Dec 3, 2006 at 15:35

While Paul Goodman's analyses is robust, intelligent, and reflects deep thought, it saddens me to see the reaction of some posters on this board who display what I would call intellectual laziness. These posters cannot resist branding the entire religion of Islam as violent and the Quran as a book of violence, because such a line of thought makes it easy to condemn and hate all Muslims - all 1.2 Billion of them.

No thought is put into the recent history of Islam, and the political divide beteween secular modernists Muslims, and the radical reactionary Muslims who see the creation of an Islamic state as the solution to all their problems.

No thought is put into the idea of viewing the great Islamic civilizations like in the Ottoman and the Moors in their historical context . Instead, they are judged as if they exist today in the modern world today, and no credit is given to the advances they made (as judged from the medieval context they existed in) in a world moving towards pluralism and free thought.

It is rather shocking that the mainstream seems to think this way - but men like Goodman and Pipes - who I may disagree with at times - at least recognize that there is a good humane Islam worth fighting for, while we never taking our eyes off the dangerous radicals.

Safraz.

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