It's nothing new for the West to be predisposed to prejudice against the Islamic world. Our irrational hatred of Muslims dates back to the time of the Crusades when we took it upon ourselves to "liberate" the Holy Land from the rule of non-believers. The fact that the so called non-believers were native to the region and the "liberators" were invaders whose only reason for attacking those countries was religious intolerance has set the tone for Muslim and Christian relations for the past 1500 hundred years.
Of course the crusaders were indiscriminate when it came to the destruction of so-called "infidels", and wiped out villages of defenceless Jews with the same enthusiasm they showed for attacking Muslim armies. It's interesting to note that during the intervals between Crusades when there was no fighting, those Christians who settled in the Middle East learned how to co-exist quite peacefully with their Muslim and Jewish neighbours. It was only those who lived outside of the region, those with no personal experience of Muslims, who fermented hatred against them.
When you look at the world today not much has changed since those times. It's still the people with the least direct contact with the Muslim world who spew forth the greatest amount of hatred towards them. In the last sixty to seventy years this behaviour has provoked the rise of what we call fundamentalists among the Muslim people — radicals who are dedicated to a dictatorial interpretation of the laws of Islam. The fact that the West calls these people fundamentalists only proves the depth of our ignorance when it comes to the Muslim faith. Only people ignorant of the religion's tenets would consider people dedicated to the practices espoused by the radicals as fundamental to Islam.
Like the Puritans of old, and the conservative Christians of today, the radical Muslim, who we are convinced is out to kill us all, represents a minority of the total Islamic population, and have through out the history of the faith. Anyone who needs convincing of that only needs to watch the forthcoming DVD release from Riverboat Records, part of the World Music Network, Sufi Soul: The Mystic Music Of Islam, and they will soon see how great a difference there is between the radicals and the majority of the population. While the movie examines the practices of one specific sect of Muslims, the Sufis, it shows how much greater an influence those people wield on the population at large than do the radicals and explores its manifestations in various countries.
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Article comments
1 - Jordan Richardson
This looks great! Gonna have to pick it up. Thanks for the review, Richard.
2 - William Hill
The writer of this dribble has absolutely no education on the history of islam and the treatment of non-believers once an area was conquered by the muslim hoard. You only need read the koran and the Hadith of mohammed to know that human rights abuse, rape, pillage, murder and slavery were what the jews, Christians and others who lived side by side with islam in the conquered lands of the middle east. Israel is not the cause nor has it ever been the cause of hate, violence and human rights abuses taught, learned and the practiced by islams' followers. Please, please if people want to post statements about the hostory and ideology of islamists, it should be a law that they study and learn the truth about what they publish. This is a musical review but it sounds more like trained statements of someone hired and put out there as an appologist for islam by the muslim brotherhood. If you can't get it right about the polotics and history then at least keep to the music and not false statements flowering an ideology like islam that profains the name of any religion by it's own hate filled writings, teachings and history of robbery, human rights violations, rape, murder and even the sickening child molestation teachings of it's so called profitt, 'marry at six, and have sexual intercourse to consumate the illigitimate marriage at 9.' Free all of our imprisoned child molesters and send them East for the freedom to live as the profitt taught.