To Plato - great piece - here're some more moderate, progressive Muslim perspectives I found

Submitted by Michel (United States), Feb 27, 2007 at 15:31

Your material very much confirms our assumptions - much obliged, Plato.

It does in a strange way make sense that violence, terrrorism is according to these pollsis rejected in these countries to a higher extent than for instance in my own beloved America.

A lot has to do with lack of education, bad info/media and our current administration which has not counteracted wide spread misinformation. Our security and safety and the fact that the average US John Doe is more interested in local gang wars, than what's going on abroad ( open the La Times and you'll find the international section to be marginal at best) resulted in wide ranging ignorance about these things.
Guess we do not have enough Vietnam Vets or had no bloody war for a long time now.
I mean - look at the "embedded" information or CNN's reports during the first Gulf WAR. It did look l ike a videogame, didn't it? . No horrific pictures as for instance during the Vietnnam War and comparably few families impacted by the loss of life.

Lastly - if you - and i repeat myself here once again - saw and experienced up close and personal, what a "surgical strike", a car bomb, a suicide bomb leaves in terms of carnage, misery and horror, you would less likely call for "nuking any country or carpet bombing them back to the stone age. That's what I called "video game approach".

Sadly our stability has led many of our people to see war and violence as an abstract notion. As you could see, people like me who actually saw such first hand, are being called "indiana Jones" - the whole thing resulting in kind of a twisted logic, where the gents from the shallow end of the gene pool are calling us naive or stupid, as we try to apply a structured approach to the phenomenon "Islam", whereas they throw these simple, simplistic joy stick type of strategies a la Goebbels around and then tap each other on their shoulders for having found such "intelligent" solutions.

I continued to research " Moderate Islam" and found interesting stuff too.

1. http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/24568
(War on terror vs War on Islam)2. http://usa.mediamonitors.net/headlines/islam_s_encounter_with_american_culture_making_sense_of_the_progressive_muslim_agenda

Interestingly there are progressive organizations and ( Susan is going to hate that one) discussions about equality for women and in many ways reminds me of similar reformation streams within our own Christian environment.

As much, as I do not like the fingerpointing, the same website also features a Muslim perspective on Islamophopia which - I am sad to admit - rings true in various paragraphs.

But of course - all of such is dismissed as Muslim Propaganda.

In all fairness I must further add a disclaimer as to the statistical data I submitted earlier. Several rather reputable sources (Rather, 60 Minutes, NY Times) state that Islam is the fastest growing religion in the US. whereas the initial data I found depicted Hinduism or Buddhism as faster growing religions.

So - trying to be "balanced" , all I can do is to repeat myself once again - all referenced material from all sides should always be digested with a grain of salt and the ultimate truth most likely lays somewehere in between the grey zones.

Due to the lack of iron clad census data, such exists in switzerland for instance, where all inhabitants are subject to "Einwohnerkontrolle" ( Gov knows at all times who lives where due to enforced respective legislation) I guess that statistical data can be found in support to pretty much any stand point. Exactly one of the measures we Americans should implement, as it would tremendously facilitate managament of the Corporation, called US of A.

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