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I hate to have to tell you this, but...Reader comment on item: How the West Could Lose Submitted by Noah Wilk (United States), Jan 10, 2007 at 00:57 Michael, I hate to have to say this, but I think you're being totally delusional in your approach. Let's go point by point. You wrote: "In this Blog extreme opinions seem to dominate. Especially fear of ISLAM - not just fear of Islamic extremists. When the intelligentsia starts to hate and promotes the most radical measures against an entire culture, we truly must start to worry." First, it is not some hysterical, xenophobic bigotry that compels us to oppose Islam so strongly. It is simply the clear understanding of the imminent threat it poses to our well-being and the will to stand firmly against it no matter what it takes. Hardly radical, and not a reason to worry. You should be more concerned that your president is spewing propaganda for the enemy and claiming that Islam is a religion of peace when that is provable and demonstrably untrue. You should be worried when people try to paint islam as a predominantly peaceful religion that is being abused by a tiny minority of radicals, when all the polls and studies done in Islamic countries show that the majority (more than 50%) endorse violence. "Just by submitting a more inclusive point of view, I got nailed by my own people, which is frightening, as these are intelligent, eloquent writers quoting a ton of facts, figures and statistics." Don't lump me in as one of "your people". I'm a realist. I don't engage in the mental gymnastics and masturbatory flights of fancy about Islam responding to peaceful overtures that you seem to. "I herewith promote to let our American Muslims or any Muslim living peacefully in any western country to rise up and stand publicly ground against any force of medieval evil stemming from some members of your own religious movement who insist on applying the teachings of the Quran to the letter of the book, hence with violence." "I call on the US Muslim readers of this blog to rise to the challenge and state their patriotism for a country which provides them with all these precious freedoms you do not see in Sudan, Somalia, Yemen or even Egypt." It doesn't make any difference if a few of them respond to some anonymous blog. What they need to do is storm the madrassahs and the mosques and root out the fanatics and the radicals and re-claim Islam as a reformed religion that denounces terrorism. They need to denounce CAIR and other terror apologist organizations. They need to stop funding Hamas, the PLO, and others. "Please help me out here and explain to the Susans and the likes, why you appreciate our mutual home, why you would never support terrorism, what the difference between Al Khaeda and your families and friends are. Please educate us, speak up, as I have dared to speak up mentioning just a few of our own weaknesses and got verbally abused for it." Do you really think a couple of blog posts by anonymous users is going to change the mind of enlightened realists such as myself, Susan, Gelling and Infidellin, etc? Now that is truly delusional! Please tell me you're joking! "Please, Muslim leaders, explain to me and the other "infidels" the paradox between the Quran's teachings and the fact that you do not go ahead and suicide bomb yourselves in Los Angeles.Why have the millions of Muslims in the USA not risen up and terrorized the rest of us?" I've already given you the answer to that one. No need to pray for a Muslim to lie to you about it. "Please tell all my angry responders, what the difference between you and fanatic Islamic fundamentalists is. Prove me right, when I said how much harmony and peace I have encountered when I visited many average Muslim families." I can walk into the home of any Muslim family in my city and be treated like royalty. And yet if I start to argue about Islam, if I defend Israel, if I criticize their religion, the friendliness disappears. You really need to learn not to trust the enemy. It will be the death of you. "As you can see, so many are afraid of you, for we do not know you." Wrong. We do know them. We do see behind their duplicity and their lies. We do pierce their veil of propaganda and revisionist history. We do see beyond the illusions they conjure in trying to fool us. We don't fear them. We loathe them. We see them for the threat they are, just as we saw Nazism and communism for the evil that they espoused. "Your fanatics have blemished an entire culture and thrown a large part of the western populus into an outright paranoia. Tell us, who you are and why you are not one of these lunatics. Show us that even the Quran can be interpreted wisely. Tell us what sets you apart from the women beheading, stoning maniacs who still live in the middle ages. Tell us, what makes your ISLAM different from the one Bin Laden is practicing." You do realize, don't you, that your begging for them to step forward and denounce terror will be seen by many of them as cowardly whining, right? That's how they think. That's how they see you. I'm not saying that's how you are, only that how you're saying it is viewed as weak and cowardly by the enemy, ie Islam. Muslims are mainly tribal people who only understand force. Until you get that through your head, you will never comprehend the reality of the threat we face. Your pleas, which sound sane, reasonable, and responsible to Westerners, is viewed as weak and pathetic by Muslims. "I , the white Christian, materialistic infidel, challenge you my Muslim Compatriots to stand with me and all integrating moderate forces. Please honor my willingness to alienate my own people by being " a multi-culti-mumbo jumbo" with your own willingness to look at ISLAM from a 21st century point of view. Not with hatred, facts, statistics and figures. You'll find them in support of any extreme point of view in abundance and for any statement out of the Quran they'll throw 10 diammetrally opposing statements back at you. As with the Bible, one can find supporting material for pretty much any point of view. it results in endless discussions and quote after quote." First, the more you beg, the weaker your stance appears to them. They frown on such begging. In their eyes, you are ripe for dhimmitude. Second, you missed the other posts of mine. I explained this. In the Bible, the New Testament supercedes the Old Testamant and replaces all the violence with peaceful attitudes. In the Koran, the later verses (which are mainly violent) which supercede any peaceful earlier verses. You have the opposite happening there. Learn your religions! "Allow us paranoids who out of sheer fear are willing to call for the next crusade, to see your wisdom, heart, the warmth I was blessed to experience in so many of your normal houses." Good lord. Please stop whining! If you beg any harder, they're going to offer you a cup to throw coins in! "Am I just an idealistic stupid fool for not judging you across the board and calling for a stop of immigration, segregation or any other reactive means of oppressing a populus?" You are idealistic and delusional in that you refuse to acknowledge the reality of the situation. Your pleas and arguments come off like some New Age Hippy Kumbayah Group Hug Therapy. The enemy would slay you on the spot for being weak, that's how they think. If you understood that, you would not be speaking in a begging, whining tone of subservance to them. I have some challenges for you, Michael. The same challenges that none of your apologist crowd seems to have the guts to take up. Find me a country where Islam dominates that is not overrun with poverty, suppression of rights, religious intolerance, violence, and suppression of freedoms. Find me an example of these mythical "moderate" Muslims you keep mentioning and who me where and when they have done anything substantial to help reform Islam and eradicate violence. Find me one single example of where the presence of Islam has made any place in the world a better place to live, with more freedoms, more rights, more tolerance, and more happiness than existed without Islam. Can you do that? If you do, you will understand why your begging is a sad reminder to the enemy of how weak the West really is.
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