I have to admit that I get a little tired of hearing Muslims say how they are not treated well in the West. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) often emphasizes how unfairly Muslims are treated across the United States, rather than showing the great contributions Muslims have made to America and emphasizing how over 4 million Muslims live in the United States in peace and with freedom of religion. Many more millions live in western Europe, in most cases with little interference with their culture and lifestyle.
Since I often give Islam and Muslims the benefit of the doubt in my writings and interviews, I feel entitled to point out some significant hypocrisy that cannot be rationally denied. CAIR quoted the Quran in a recent e-mail, so I feel justified in using the same quotes as my scripture for this article:
"Be steadfast in your devotion to God, bearing witness to the truth in all equity, and never let the hatred of others to you make you swerve to wrong and depart from justice. Be just: (for) that is closest to piety..." The Holy Quran, 5:8-9
"God will never change the condition of a people until they change that which is within themselves." The Holy Quran, 13:11
Who suppresses and oppresses Muslims? The answer is patently obvious for the world to see: other Muslims! Let’s recount some of the examples we’ve seen in the last three decades:
The Ayatollahs of Iran took over their country and murdered tens of thousands of their opponents, as recounted in Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Shirin Ebadi’s book, Iran Awakening. The name of Neda will live forever in Iran as a symbol of this oppression. She is the young woman shot dead by government gangsters when President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won reelection under suspicious circumstances. To this day, more than three decades after taking power, the Ayatollahs suppress their people by letting their thugs beat them up for dissent. Do they actually think they can crush a thought? How do they think God guides them in this?
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Alan Kurtz
If Muslims want to experience less hate in the United States, they would do well to emphasize the positive aspects of their culture.
That presupposes, of course, that there are any. You devote several pages to Muslims abusing each other, without citing anything positive. Perhaps that's because Islam is a fundamentally negative force in the world.
I think you're right in saying, "A large part of the reason most Americans do not trust Islam and Muslims is informed by the inhumanity we see Muslims visit upon one another…." As I see it, inhumanity is the essence of Islam.
Personally, I've already made my mind up about Muslims in America. I believe their subculture adds nothing of value and, worse, causes serious harm through radicalization. The best thing Muslims as a group can do for America is to reject Islam lock, stock and oil barrel.
2 - Arch Conservative
"Perhaps that's because Islam is a fundamentally negative force in the world."
Oh jeebus Alan, now you've done it. You're going to have every left wing moonbat and his mother calling you a racist (even though Islam is a religion and not a race.)
Islam, more than any other religion in the world today, is rife with examples of intolerance and violence towards others. That's a fact. It does the world no good whatsoever to deny this fact but yet the left is completely vested in doing so while positing that Pat Robertson makes Mummar Quadaffi and his ilk look like boy scouts.
There can be no surer sign of mankind's ultimate ugly demise at his own hands than the fact that so many in the world today can so easily subscribe to the warped, twisted, perverse, degenerate mindset that is the modern American left.
3 - Christopher Rose
In my view it is actually monotheism that is at fault.
Islam today is at the same point as Christianity was a few hundred years ago. Hopefully the faster pace of life these days means it will become less volatile more quickly...
4 - Arch Conservative
Have you been drinking American bottled water Christopher?
All of a sudden your comments have aligned themselves with reality.
Next thing we know you'll be joining the EDL.........
5 - Christopher Rose
Don't really understand your point, Archie; I've been arguing the same line for ages. So have you, of course, but your diatribes against the left are just silly...
6 - Arch Conservative
Christopher, not being an Americana and having to personally deal with the left in this nation on a daily basis certainly colors your perception of my animosity toward the left as "silly."
7 - Christopher Rose
No it doesn't, Archie. The same crap is found all over the world and on both sides of the political spectrum.
So long as you focus on just one side you are always going to be a part of the problem not the solution.
8 - Doug Hunter
This raises an interesting point especially as it relates to political fault lines. The default position of the left is to choose who they deem oppressed and side with them against the oppressor, they side with poor over rich, female over male, LGBT over straight, minority over majority, etc., etc. which leads to their inclination to support Muslims, to excuse and rationalize their actions. I think this issue is critical in Europe right now and has them rethinking their politics. Many times things are exactly as they seem and those viewed as oppressed are suffering at the hands of the oppressor, but what if as may be the case with Islam it is the very nature of the religious systems of the 'oppressed' themselves causing the problem then all the PC handwringing is simply wasted energy, fiddling while the world burns.
#3
I think it's pretty silly to compare relative morals of Muslims to Christians (or anyone really) who lived hundreds of years apart. The question becomes then why, Christians being equally evil in your mind, did they get hundreds of years ahead in the realm of morality in the first place? As far as your silly notions regarding Monotheism, Athiests have been only a tiny minority of leaders throughout history yet the horrors of Communism were carried out under atheists, Hitler though only questionably atheist was antagonistic towards religion as it held an alternate authority to the state. In short, atheists and those openly against religion have committed some of the most horrible genocides and horrific atrocities known to man despite being a tiny minority of those in positions of power. I'm not religious so I don't have a god in this fight, but your position seems a bit self serving and biased. Humans with religion do good and bad things, humans without religion do good and bad things, it's a bit silly to take one half of the world, the bad, and lay it all at the feet of religion without considering the other half as well. Christianity is part and parcel your heritage and embodies ideas that molded the very society you live in today whether you embrace it or not. In polite western civilization christianity is on it's way out, I don't see any need to kick it on the way down.
9 - Christopher Rose
Doug, perhaps it is you that is being pretty silly. I didn't compare anybody's relative morality, nor would I ever use the word morality in any circumstances.
Christianity, false as it is, is simply a lot older than Islam, a more recent variation of the same fake dogma.
I'm well aware that some atheists have done some bad things but fail to see how that is any way relevant to my point, which is simply that monotheism is a load of superstitious nonsense we can all do without.
10 - Glenn Contrarian
Alan and Arch -
Apparently, neither of you are aware of the fact that historically speaking, mainstream "Christianity" has killed more people in the name of God than has any other religion - including Islam.
Furthermore, history shows that Jews have been FAR safer among Muslims than among mainstream 'Christians'. The hatred that many Muslims have for Israel is NOT so much against Jews, but against Zionists. There's a difference - go educate yourselves.
11 - Glenn Contrarian
Hermes -
I recommend The Shi'a Revival by Vali Nasr. He's a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School down in California, and his book was on the Naval recommended reading list. It's quite enlightening, particularly when it comes to the conflicts between Sunni and Shi'a, and how - in their own words - they mistrust each other more than they do America or even Israel.
12 - Arch Conservative
So by your logic you'd rather be a Jew in the middle east than a muslim in a predominately Christian nation like the US Glenn?
13 - roger nowosielski
"... nor would I ever use the word morality in any circumstances." #9
Why wouldn't you? A perfectly ordinary English term and it's got nothing to do with religion except by association.
14 - Glenn Contrarian
Arch -
Note the words, "historically speaking". At this point in history, Jews are safer than ever before. At THIS point in history, they're safer in "Christian" countries...but this has only been the case since the end of WWII...and IIRC even then there were many tens of thousands who were persecuted in the (supposedly secular) Soviet Union.
Their safety will last only as long as it remains politically incorrect to persecute them...and they know it. For all the things they do wrong - and their hands have innocent blood on them, too - considering what they've faced throughout history from every culture where they've settled (except for in China, interestingly enough), I cannot blame them for their national paranoia.
15 - Christopher Rose
Roger, precisely because of its association; it is so tainted and usually used to manipulate people.
Ethics is a better term that has no such corruption.
16 - Doug Hunter
#10
Not because Christianity is any better or worse but because it was a central religion of the people we have good records of. The inquisition kept detailed records and actual death tolls were minor by modern genocide standards. The crusades were to retake lands that Muslims had previously sacked, it sounds like dual credit there. Atheist communists killed by various estimates tens up to a hundred million people in the last century alone directly because of their beliefs (granted atheism isn't a religion). Hitler was responible for WWII and the equal number of deaths, in addition to outright genocide there and he was antagonistic toward religion. Without any direct massive genocides to their credit and since historically the population of the world just wouldn't support many 100,000,000 man kills I don't see how, even if you take their 20 centuries of history combined you can get a total to match what non-religious/atheists have done in recent history. Whoever made that claim probably had to stretch a bit with the numbers, I'd be interested to see your source though.
17 - Skip Conover
Glenn, Thanks for the pointer to the book. Best regards, Skip
18 - Alan Kurtz
It's telling and oh-so-predictable that no subsequent commenter has bothered to refute my assertion that today's Muslim subculture in America adds nothing of value and, worse, causes serious harm through radicalization.
Instead we get the same tired--no, make that, exhausted--arguments from the usual BC pigeonholers. Every discussion must immediately be reduced to Left vs. Right or to the ancient history of one religion vs. another, all leading as inevitably as day into night to Hitler. (See #16.)
What an unimaginative and monotonous lot you are!
And now, to paraphrase Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard (1950), "Alright, Mr. Chief Censor, I'm ready for my comment to be deleted."
19 - roger nowosielski
@15
I try not to be influenced in my usage of language by fools and restore it instead to its proper form. Ethics often comes close to the meaning, but the two terms aren't always interchangeable.
20 - Glenn Contrarian
Doug -
I agree that atheism killed far more than any one religion ever has, and possibly more than all religions put together. But that still does not absolve mainstream "Christianity" of what it has done in God's Name...and of mainstream "Christianity's" grand hypocrisy in their public persecution of Islam.
21 - Skip Conover
Alan, I will refute your argument. At the very minimum our Muslim community helps us understand the Muslim world, which includes 1.6 billion people. We cannot just build a fence around the United States and pretend Muslims do not exist. We need to find a way to live in peace, and that includes understanding Muslim culture. Best regards, Skip
22 - Glenn Contrarian
Alan -
It's telling and oh-so-predictable that no subsequent commenter has bothered to refute my assertion that today's Muslim subculture in America adds nothing of value and, worse, causes serious harm through radicalization.
That, sir, is the same kind of crap that people said about every immigrant group that's ever come to America, including Italians, Irish, Mexicans, Catholics, Jews, Roma, Jamaicans, Russians...you name it.
And I've personally heard - and said - the same kind of crap said about blacks back in my racist days.
Alan, you really, truly need a reality check. When it comes to ethical behavior of the common man, no one ethnic or religious or political or racial group is any worse than any other. It is only the LEADERS of those groups that can be judged as ethically better or worse.
Look at the Nazis, Alan - in many ways their government resembled a religion, and we all know what they did. What's more, the German equivalent of Joe Everyman joined in the persecution of the Jews (and other religions AND the unions). But look at the generations since then! Nazi Germany was FAR worse by any measure than Islam...and according to your logic, then, we should say of the Germans what you just posted about Muslims.
And Nazi Germany isn't the only example. We could say the same about Catholics, or protestants, or...pick a religion or a culture - your choice! - and I'll point out how their hands also drip innocent blood as well!
So get off the Muslims-hate-freedom bandwagon and start seeing not only the bad but also the good within nearly ALL humans!
23 - Cannonshop
#18 What has ANY "Demographic" really contributed, Alan? our society is rooted in the accomplishment of individuals, not the movement of the Masses, so your question regarding what Islam has or has not contributed to the United States is as much a red-herring as asking what the Mormons have contributed.
There is no "Value of Utility" required for the free exercise of one's religious beliefs, so long as that exercise does not harm your neighbour.
What surprises me, is that I have to explain this position to a Conservative, Alan-thinking of people based on demographics is how Liberals(large "L", no relation to the classical definition that included most of the founders) justify most of their positions and decide who should get help at the (coerced) expense of others.
I'd suspect that the majority of American Muslims are no different, in the practice of their day-to-day life, than the majority of Baptists, Mormons/LDS, Jews, Buddhists, or (gasp!)Atheists in America.
PEOPLE do good things, and PEOPLE do bad things- Religious or Irreligious, that's how it works HERE-or at least, how it is SUPPOSED to work.
24 - Alan Kurtz
Skip Conover (#21), what's to understand? The message of bloodthirsty foreign savages and their deluded or duplicitous American apologists is clear enough.
25 - Alan Kurtz
Glenn Contrarian (#22), if there had never been a Nazi Germany for you and other BC commenters to cite by way of historical example, your comments collectively would be 50% shorter. Please add that never-ending shitload of excess verbiage to your list of Nazi atrocities.