Pro-Isralei is right on!

Submitted by zzazzeefrazzee (United States), Dec 12, 2006 at 20:08

Pro-israeli has it right on. I think many of my fellow Americans harbor distinct sectarian prejudice and bias towards their fellow American Muslims, many of whom detest the Wahhabis, Salafists, fundamentalists, and other hardliners. Most Americans fail to draw any kind of distinction.

Many of these same Americans are hostile to any sort of interfaith dialog or ecumenical efforst as being terribly "PC". I for one am glad that our president has not echoed these sentiments, and it is to his credit that he has done otherwise, in the face of disdain and detractions by a certain segment of his own constiuency, Sadly certain political pundits gain a lot of attention from sympathetic ears when they gleefully promote the "non-existence" of moderation among Muslims as a sign that they can never truly reform.

Portraying all muslims collectively as violent extremists is simply false, and those that steadfastly promote it suffer from their own form of sectarian prejudice, butressed by sanctimonious beliefs that they are superior. Of course, let's just forget that the west engaged in many less-than-pleasant activities, and overlook how we became more moderate ourselves.

Let's forget what forged this great nation to begin with, and the practice of religious freedom and tolerance that sets us apart was a pretty radical idea. Lets forget the forced conversion of slaves, or the endorsement of Christian groups a few decades ago of home-spun KKK terrorism. Of course, all of this fear-mongering goes on all the while some very valid discussions are occuring and taking place- and precisely where they need to occur- within the muslim communities and the Midlle East. Yet many of my fellow Americans are so obstinate that they cannot even begin to look for it, as they are so hooked on spoon-fed "truth-mongering" of certain blogs and poltical pundits.

If only 1/10 of the energy and effort spent towards collectively trashing all Muslims were instead spent learning some of the relevant languages, my fellow Americans might actually start making a real contribution to the war on terror. Yet most seemingly prefer to vent about people they don't like, based on selective information purveyed by certain web sites (sadly, I doubt Bernard Lewis is quoted much these days). Why bother learning a language if you already hear eactly what you want?

Some interesting links and food for thought (btw- I don't see CAIR listed- do you?) http://www.saudidebate.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=447&Itemid=122 http://freemuslims.org/ (Daniel has made positive comments on the above) http://muslimsforamerica.us/ (Muslim Republicans- most Muslims I know voted for Bush in 2000) http://www.altmuslim.com/ Not that I agree with everything here, but it is a good cross section of what we see in the US today. http://www.altmuslim.com/perm.php?id=1783_0_25_0_C43 Article by Dr. Aslam 'Abdullah who was recently featured on Glenn Beck's program vigorously opposing islamic extremism. http://www.aafaq.org/ Daniel has previously highlighted Omran Salman and his efforts to not only promote reform in teh Arab world, but also for his criticism of the victimizing posturing of groups like CAIR. http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/660 http://www.mvp-us.org/ http://www.aei.org/events/contentID.20061025133354088/default.asp The Center for Islamic Pluralism: http://www.islamicpluralism.org/ Muslims Peace Fellowship: http://www.mpfweb.org/ http://www.islamicsupremecouncil.org/bin/site/wrappers/isca_inside_extremism.html Anti-extremist page on ISCA site AIC congress, including efforts by Arabs and Muslims to confront genocide in Sudan http://www.aicongress.org/ Muslims Peace Fellowship: http://www.mpfweb.org http://www.islamfortoday.com/terrorism.htm Another good way to keep tabs on reformist discussions is to look at MEMRI and the page dedicated to this topic: http://www.memri.org/reform.html Alan Godlas at the University of Georgia has kept a running page for severla years: http://www.uga.edu/islam/jihad.html

Then you have this group: http://www.patrioticapaam.org/. With regard to this last organization, I'm reminded of the fact that if you deign to collectively trash all Muslims, you are generously including those who serve in our military, our FBI, our CIA, who despise fundamentalism, who aid if not fight for our country. You include those who provide valuable and much needed translation services, because americans are too many of my fellow Americans are regrettably too dumb to bother to learn the necessary languages. You include those muslims who guard our embassies abroad. You include those muslims who make valuable contributions to our society (not only the NIH director, but how about this years Nobel laureates?) The claim that all muslims engage in the practice taqiya is utterly ludicrous.

I frankly find it rather disturbing that so many Americans readily consume this sort of "pseudo-scholarship" of those who endorse this position. Of course it takes a brain to double check your sources and maintain any kind of intellectual objectivity whilst doing so! Hence I asked Daniel himself about this a while back, and he has never endorsed this particular view. http://www.danielpipes.org/search/?searchtext=taqiya&submit=1 Certain political leaders, notably the late Yasser Arafat engaged in what we should properly call "doublespeak", but this is a very different thing from taqiya.

Sadly, this false notion is steadily promoted by certain blogs, but if you have ever studied much about the religion in any comprehensive manner, you will readily learn that it is considered a Shia convention. http://www.taqiyya.com/1.html It is pathetically easy for my fellow Americans to misinterpret much of what Pipes and others have written, and even more pathetic and easy to vent about "all of them over there" and how we need ot get them "the hell outta here" etc etc. It is despicably easy to characterize all Muslims as inherently evil. Yet we hear it more and more , all the time, and blogs like this attract such comments like flies on a dead carcass.

Such comments obviously fail to offer any real or effective solutions, unless ethnic cleansing, forced deporatation, and government sponsored prosyletizing is in the offing. Many blindly hurl their insults towards those who support our efforts, and other activities that would simply sabotage our efforts. The fact that such comments effectively sabotage our efforts is surely slow to dawn on the minds of those who make them. At least some Americans know what bigotry smells like- whether militant Islamist, or the more native varieties.... http://www.californiarepublic.org/archives/Columns/Peters/20060908PetersWithin.html http://www.californiarepublic.org/Notes/Notes200609.html#012 http://www.reason.com/news/show/36677.html By the way- to many of the commentators here- learn some Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Pashto or Urdu! You might learn something! zzazzee!

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