I must say I find very little to criticize in the posts on this issue. I spent 47 weeks, 8 hours per day, 5 1/2 days per week, doing nothing but studying how to speak, read, write and understand Arabic at the Defense Language Institute at the Presidio of Monterey, California, back in 1964. Then, the Army in its infinite wisdom, sent me directly to Vietnam and I haven’t met two people since from Arab countries.

However, I must say that, in addition to language, we were taught a great deal of Arabic culture, as well…including quite a bit of religious practice and beliefs. Islam IS, with question, a religion which preaches anything but “peace”…at least “peace” in the sense of non-violence, tolerance and turn-the-other-cheek sort. Quite the contrary, in point of fact.

Jews and Arabs are both “Semetic” peoples, meaning they are descendants of Noah’s son, Shem. Hebrew and Arabic have much in common. For example, in Hebrew, the word for peace is Shalom. In Arabic, it’s Salaam. Supposedly the two groups split when Abraham’s two sons went THEIR separate ways…Abraham’s son by Sarah becoming the father of the Hebrews and his son by his wife’s maid becoming the father of the various Arab nations. Isaac and Ishmael were not known to be bitter enemies, but the two groups became so later in history.

Muhammad is supposed to have united the twelve tribes and thereafter founded Islam, but, unlike Christ, Muhammad was a warrior and he wrote of the necessity of conquest to spread Islam throughout the known world and is the personal author of the Qu’ran which is VERY militant. No matter which variety of Islam–Sunni, Shia, Wahabbi–one choses, the basic teachings of the Qu’ran are identical in that they tEach violence and assure adherents that giving one’s life for the “cause” of spreading Islam will insure paradise in the afterlife. There simply is NO WAY to counter that with logic, or “understanding” or the left’s favorite “solution”…diplomacy.