My Response

Submitted by moderate Muslim (United States), Apr 22, 2007 at 11:15

My response

Daniel Pipes is not adequately informed about the topic he is commenting on. How many of the posters here have ever been to a mosque? How many have listened to the Friday sermon? How many have just been browsing websites that say that Muslims everywhere are crazy and they just latched onto that idea? Most Muslims are moderate Muslims.

I tend to not like using the word moderate with Muslim simply because it seems to say that there are Muslims and then their are moderate Muslims. There are only one kind of Muslims, and these are those who follow the teaching of the prophet. I would say that the terrorists are not Muslim, they are killers, who believe that they are Muslim, and yet fail to realize the flaws in their ideas.

The people in the House of Saud who fail to let women drive while drinking Jack Daniels are hypocrites. This seems to be a debate about whether there are moderate Muslims and how to help them if they exist, how to stop the "HUGE ISLAMIST THREAT." Stop calling it an Islamist threat. They are not real Muslims. Muslims are not permitted to kill for no reason.

True Muslims are those who follow the teachings of Allah and his prophets. It is ridiculous for people to think that because some pscho fanatics attacked us, that means we have to go to war with Islam, or even further, as Noah Wilk goes, bomb them back to the Stone Age. Sure, we need to help people realize that America is not evil, but we cant do this by killing them.

I am in no way justifying the actions of terrorists, but would it be soo wrong to look at the causes of their behavior, what led them to believe that they were warranted (which they werent) in attacking America in the name of Islam. America has played many of the people in the Muslim world for fools. Our government protects a brutal and oppresive regime in Saudi Arabia, it calls Egypt a great nation when that country jails people for not agreeing with dictatorship. It denounces the democratic elections in Palestine because the winners were too mad at Israel killing their relatives to recognize them as a state.

We invaded Iraq for nothing, we left Afganistan by and large, and we are whole-heartedly one sided on the Israeli Palestinian issue, condemning any Palestinian crimes while accepting Israeli ones. The Muslim world looks up and sees the US doing absolutely nothing to help them, and in fact a lot to hurt them, intentionally or unintentionally, and that is why a small, small, small minority of people feel they are justifyied to commit crimes, which they arent again. Instead calling Islam a menace and urging reform, we could go back to the Sunnah of the Prophet, a peaceful man, who marched into the city which had tortured him and hurt him and harmed no one. He walked into the city with his army and declared that all people would be safe, he made no one became Muslim, they came to him. Islam is not the problem, the problem is disaffected crazies who think what they are doing is right, and few Muslims support them. I, a Muslim in America, know of none who do support them. Thank you for reading this.

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