Actually, we care very much

Submitted by Jeff (United States), Mar 22, 2007 at 21:34

Actually, Sir or Madam, we care very much.

Thank you for writing.

Please let me try to give you some sense of the perceptions you're up against. These perceptions don't come out of thin air; they exist because of real causes, such as the following:

We watched as Muslims danced in the streets on September 11, highly entertained by people faced with a choice of burning in aviation fuel or jumping from windows a hundred stories above the ground. We saw the nineteen hijackers' pictures on front pages of Pakistani newspapers under headlines like "Islamic heroes." Poll after poll indicates that Osama bin Laden is the most popular person in the Islamic world.

And then we're told that September 11 was all done by a bunch of Jews. All that cheering for a bunch of Jews?

We're told "we have bin Laden, you have your Timothy McVeigh." As though Timothy McVeigh was exhorted by Catholic priests in church after church to blow up a Federal office building. As though Christians around the world danced in the streets on April 19, 1995. As though newspapers in Rome celebrated Timothy McVeigh as a Christian soldier.

Thousands of Muslims emigrate to the West every year, and virtually no westerners ever emigrate to the middle east (Michael Jackson, that's about it). Yet we stand accused of "stealing Arab lands."

We buy 3-5 dollar barrels of oil for 60-70 dollars a barrel, and we're accused of "stealing Arab resources."

We listen as Muslims shout their hatred of western society and everything it stands for, especially freedom of speech. Many of those same Muslims themselves choose to live in the west and are employing their freedom of speech as they shout their hatred and death threats in the streets of western cities, for example, London. Then they go home to their subsidized apartments, the ones they received when they were admitted to the country, having left an Islamic country and sought asylum in the west. Give me asylum. Give me a home. Give me rights. Give me freedom. Give me money. And then listen to me scream my hatred of you in your streets.

We watched as thousands of Muslims went crazy in the streets yelling "Our blood and our souls for you, O Saddam" for the man who murdered more Muslims than anyone else in modern history.

With translations now readily available, we read Friday sermons, given by "holy men" in "holy mosques" that routinely insult, denigrate, call for murder and celebrate the death of non-Muslims. We find this incomprehensible. We never hear our priests, ministers or rabbis say anything remotely like that, ever.

So Muslims live in Dar al Islam, and the rest of us live in Dar al Harb, the "house of war." That's respectful? That's not insulting?

We watch as anyone entering Saudi Arabia with a cross on a small chain around his neck, discreetly under is shirt, has that cross ripped from around his neck crushed under the feet of Saudi customs agents. If he has a bible in his suitcase he sees it torn up and trashed before he's led off to a Saudi prison. This is tolerance? This is respect? Can you imagine the reaction if a US Customs agent showed that much respect to a Muslim arriving in the USA?

Thousands of Muslims attend mosques week after week in the USA, undisturbed and in complete safety. Mosques are never blown up in the USA, as they are almost weekly in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Yet we hear endlessly about America's "war on Islam."

Muslims exercised their freedom of expression in Afghanistan and destroyed the ancient stone statues of Buddha in the Bamiyan valley that were universally seen by people around the world as among the world's great cultural treasures. I heard no whining about any offensive pictures of destroyed Buddhas in newspapers. No riots in Thailand. No riots in India. No Buddhists rioting anywhere. No little old Muslim ladies shot in the back on the street. No imams murdered in mosques. Compare that to the reaction after a few cartoons.

Every day, around the world, people convert. No problem. Buddhists become Christians. Christians become Muslims. Christians become Jews. Jews become Christians. Christians become Buddhists. Catholics become Protestant. Protestants become Catholic. Muslims become...oops, murdered for apostasy. Another example of tolerance? Just more respect?

Muslims kill themselves to murder groups of Jewish civilians in Israel, groups of Muslim schoolgirls in Iraq, European subway commuters, airline passengers and office workers in the USA, to get to a pornographic heaven where 72 virgins await them. (I don't think even Hollywood could have dreamed that up.) Imams routinely perform temporary marriages in Iran. Saudis have hunted hubara bustard birds to near extinction in Pakistani wildlife protection areas because they think they're an aphrodisiac. Turkey and Iran are the center of the world's sex slave trade. And every day (or, at least, every Friday) we hear how we degenerate westerners are obsessed with sex.

I could go on. But despite all of the above and more, most of us in the west still harbor some hope that there are Muslims who think like you. Some of us dare to hope a sizable number of Muslims silently think like you. We harbor hope that beneath the constant flow of hatred, insults and vitriol from the Islamic world, the celebrations of death, the calls for murder, the incredible intolerance, the fantasy conspiracy theories, the perennial popularity of Mein Kamph, etc, etc, that there are people like you who respect others and simply want to live their lives in peace. People who believe in the words "live and let live." People who don't judge other cultures based on wars of a thousand years ago. People who want not only computers, cell phones, oil drilling equipment, blue jeans and sneakers, but who also appreciate, or at least, can tolerate, the freedom of inquiry, freedom of speech and the resulting marketplace of ideas that invents and produces such products.

Sir or Madam, thank you for helping me to hope.

You take care too, please, and God bless you.

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