I fear it all boils down to this (far from) simple problem...

Submitted by Kevin M (United States), May 11, 2007 at 20:23

Freedom of religion. That's it. In the US, we cherish freedom to worship as we please.

So as long as Islam is classified as a religion (which I think would be difficult-to-impossible to abrogate), you are forced to tolerate all the "Jews are decendants of pigs" and "Take off the heads of the unbelievers" with all the rest. If your "religion" says, for example, that people of a certain race are inferior, you can't be charged with a hate crime when you are merely practicing your religion.

Blame the founding fathers and signatories of the Constitution. Did they really envision Scientology? Did any of them read the Koran before they drafted the Constitution? We like to say that they were some of the most far-thinking men in American history, but freedom of religion has clearly turned out to be a very dangerous can of worms.

I have met a number of Muslims who very clearly reject the stone-age mentality of their own holy book. I know Christians who take great umbrage with the parts of the Bible that speak ill of the intermingling of races and of keeping slaves.

It would be very nice if a devout Muslim, Jew, Christian or whatever could take the spirit and philosophical merits of their religion to guage their behaviors, but as long as the odious sections of so-called holy books remain, they are stark invitations to extremism in the eyes of people with tiny little brains and malicious hearts.

I will leave you with an exit question: Do you believe or suspect that, after 9/11, numerous mosques were quietly and discreetly visited by federal authorities, and the imams thereof were read the riot act? "Look, Adel, we're just trying to keep the peace here. If you've got some members spouting off about jihad at the Main Street Bank and you don't tell us about it, just how much protection do you think we can give you when there's sixty million rednecks in this country all trigger-happy to fill this mosque with a ton of lead, one bullet at a time?!"

I suspect the brighter elements of the Muslim community realize that our tolerance has limits, and it is being tested with every American jihadi caught.

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