OCCOM BILL wrote:Foxy, to civilized people, there is no second side to suicide attacks on innocent children. There's no rational way to spin that. There's no conflicting stories about who's burning embassies over a cartoon either.
The silly Packer example was created merely to give me a hypothetical soapbox to stand on and rain down my discontent with the unacceptable behavior of my peers. Vince (peace be upon him) wouldn't have me stay quiet while the radical few brought shame on us all... unless of course he wasn't all that displeased.
I can think of few petitions easier to sign than a denouncement of suicide attacks on civilian innocents, regardless of their motivation. This isn't the kind of denouncement that should offer "ya, but's". If you are correct, and the vast majority of Muslims condemn the perpetrators of such crimes, they are doing themselves a grave disservice by not making that abundantly clear.
Muslims: Say it loud!
Another chink in the theory of "vast majority": If that were so, why doesn't it get stamped out internally before the rest of the world even has to consider stamping?
You used the Packers as an analogy and so did I. I took that example no more seriously than you did except that a principle of human nature works in both. The Iran leadership, for instance, is putting out stupid propaganda that the Holocaust was a hoax. You are hearing rumbles of protest about that in the United States, but where is the outrage from Europe where it actually happened? I'm not hearing or seeing much, mostly because of the underlying anti-Israeli sentiments you find there these days.
Ask any Muslin on any American street if they condemn hostage taking, beheadings, and bombing innocents and I would bet a week's pay that the response would be 9 to 1 that yes, they condemn it all. Ask a peace loving Muslim in the midst of angry militant Muslims in Europe the same question and he might think it prudent to not answer or hedge his answer. That ties in with my analogy too.
Then go to the Bush-supporters thread and read Ann Coulter's column I posted there today. Whatever you think of Coulter, she absolutely nailed it on this issue.
I'm just saying that our appropriate targets both in the war of words and the war of bullets should be targeted at those Muslims or anybody else who thinks murdering innocent people is a proper way to express themselves. I think to assume that the vast majority of Muslims are of that ilk is a grave mischaracterization of the people of Islam.
