I have been wrestling with my own devil of not liking any religion -- not one damned one -- and hearing all the good people of a2k discuss this subject. It seems there is a real tendency to either hate or soft-pedal what is, to me, a growing Muslim threat. Is there a middle ground? I wonder.
It is difficult to separate Muslims... who follow the Islam religion... from the Muslim culture, precisely because following Islam is, when done "properly," an all-encompassing lifestyle. It is difficult not to resent Muslims (or others) who dress differently, act differently, educate and raise their children differently, etc. all in the name of their religion. We used to call that kind of behavior a religious cult.... or hippies.
Moreover, Muslims have a huge tendency to be insular... to only help "their own." It is not just the outsiders like me who see this... the adherents are themselves trying to be different, to create their own enclave in the midst of a free society. I know that German Baptists AND the Mormons AND other religious sects get that same kind of resentment in this state. They don't even want to "fit in" with our society... what's not to resent there? I have some real problems with people who come to my "free" society and then set up a bunch of rules for themselves that begin to spill over onto me.
So, I've been reading this thread, thinking about it and researching the subject, as I've had time... using the wildly liberal <insert lighthearted grin here>... PBS series, Frontline.
Al Qaeda's New Front
I thought the following quote was telling (note, the emphasized parts are from me) :
Quote:
To many, it all started in 1989.
That was the year Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa condemning British author Salman Rushdie to death for his polemic account of Islam in The Satanic Verses. The controversy was largely seen as an intrusive threat -- an unwelcome import from Iran that played out on Western soil, targeting a man that had been a British citizen for two decades.
But European intellectuals and cultural critics who blasted the fatwa at the time were stunned to learn many British Muslims, born and educated in the U.K., openly supported the death sentence -- in defiance of Western law and European civilization no less.
That really makes sense. Who here did not feel total shock about the Rushdie "fatwa"? I knew good liberal people in my town who immediately went out and purchased that book to show their solidarity with Rushdie... the underdog.
Do you remember how you felt at the time? I'd be interested to know. I know my immediate reaction was pure astonishment, then flaming anger.
Quote:
"Suddenly it seemed that Islam was not compatible with European political principles and values," says Jocelyne Cesari, a principal research fellow at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), visiting professor at Harvard University and author of When Islam and Democracy Meet: Muslims in Europe and the United States. The controversy, she says, challenged long-rooted European traditions of secularism that maintain a separation between religion and citizenship.
That is our ideal... the separation. For me, that is the reason the Evangelical Christianity is so annoying. Keep your religion to yourself has always been one of the first two precepts of modern etiquette and our own western lifestyles. Suddenly, we have an upstart religionist from BFE Iran who demands that anyone who is a true believer of that religion should feel no compunction at all about a cold-blooded killing of an author because of what he has written no matter where in the world that killing might occur.
Quote:Since then, the debate over secularism seems to be widening, driven in part by globalization and demographic trends: In 1945, there were less than 1 million Muslims living in Western Europe; today there are an estimated 18 million. The proposed entry of Turkey into the European Union would increase this number to nearly 90 million.
When I combine that unbelievable growth of Islam into Western states, with the strange fact that it is the only religion which is apparently growing in numbers, and with the radical Islamists attacks which seem to come out of nowhere and are designed to create terror, plus the horror that I've felt as I've learned about the religion which I felt I needed to know for my own sanity and safety [how to pronounce their strange words, understand as well as possible THEIR prejudices against lefthandedness, dogs, feet, etc., learn about their reverence for their Koran, their holy sites, their hatred of the Jewish state, their total prejudice against pagans, their ill-treatment of females, and the religious and judicial violence which seems pervasive in Muslim society]... well, it seems to me that it is strange to not have some preconception. And any preconception can just as easily be called my own prejudicial feelings against a religion, a culture and a lifestyle that is the antithesis of most everything I enjoy.
I believe that my own Christian neighbors would burn me at a stake if they knew everything I thought. How much worse would it be for me if I were living in a Muslim world?
