I myself have gone back and forth on the whole Islam-is-Peace and Islam-is-Terror argument. Before 9/11 I could have cared less, although I knew there were extremists that had committed acts of terror from the Munich Olympics to the USS Cole. On 9/11 I wanted them all dead and would have gladly engaged in a Hitler-like purge to rid the world of the pestilence that had left 3000 dead and Lower Manhattan a gaping hole and threatened the rest of us with the same.
But would that have been any less extreme or nihilistic than the extremists themselves?
If I have one major gripe, it’s that the ‘extremist minorities’ of Islam, unlike those in the West, often control the machineries of state and use their considerable wealth, power and influence to not only make their own societies Islamist hellholes, but ours as well. They are the same ilk of ‘extremist minorities’ that left Europe a devastataed wasteland during WWII.
That said, I have too much respect for the reasonable Muslim Voices In The Wilderness who are as sick of the violence justified in the name of Islam as were are, like those at www.freemuslims.org , to want to line them all up against the wall.
To them, Islam is truly a Religion of Peace which they practice both in word and deed. Their credo is ‘he who saves one life saves the world entire’ and not having theological debates as to whether it is permissible to slaughter even innocent Muslims in Jihad.
Does anyone else see the twisted irony of clerics permitting jihadis to kill fellow Muslims in order to save them?
The problem is the radicals, imams and clerics who wield far too much power and influence, like The Grand Mufti of Syria who threatened the Dutch people over Fitna from no less an esteemed podium than the EU Parliament. If those EU diplomats were more like Churchill and less like Chamberlaine they would have thrown his fascist riot-inciting robed ass in jail on the spot, not given him a standing ovation.
So there it is. Do all we can to strip power from, overthrow or kill the extremists before they do the same to us, shut up, jail or deport the radicals, and dope smack their enablers in the West.
I hate to use the analogy, but the Rev. Jeremiah Wright is of the same stripe as the Grand Mufti, and Obama doesn’t help matters any by whitewashing him i.e. condemning his words,refusing to disavow him and then equivocating later that it was just a few sound bites loped together. Hate is hate, no matter who or what the source. To throw his own slogan back at him, ‘Words Matter.’ We have to stand up or get used to lying down.
Inshallah!
