Hi Billy, On Nov 2, 2010, at 11:03 AM, [email protected] wrote: > Every day there are stories like this. No one story is all that newsworthy, > but added up the narrative is overwhelming --relentless persecution of > Christians. > Now and then I come across similar stories about individual Hindus or > Buddhists > or small families. Granted, there also are occasional news items about bad > conduct > by Hindus, even Christians or Buddhists once in a while, but the actions of > Muslims > is predominant by any objective measure. This goes on in almost any Muslim > country > you can name, but mostly, it seems, in Pakistan, Bangla Desh, Indonesia, > Egypt, > Turkiye, Palestine / West Bank, Nigeria, Somalia, and Sudan.There are also > misc incidents in Muslim enclaves in some cities in Europe.
What I recently realized is that there's two distinct (albeit overlapping) problems with Islam: a) Terrorism b) Sharia I suspect you probably see the two as equivalent, and certainly both spring from Fundamentalism, and can be expressed in similar ways. However, most Muslims are not actual terrorists, and (possibly) a majority are opposed to terrorism per se. On the other hand, most Muslims are comfortable with _some_ level of Sharia Law, even if only to self-police their own communities. What I just noticed is that when we criticize Islam, most liberals assume we are equating Islam with terrorism. Which most Muslims in the West are quick to denounce, and thus they consider us ignorant hate-mongers. But (as I understand it) terrorism isn't the root problem. The real problem is Islamic fundamentalism, which is expressed through Sharia on a regular basis, and terrorism in extreme cases. That is, terrorism is a symptom; we want to eradicate the root cause. What the liberals overlook is that "endemic" Sharia in Muslim communities is the carrier for the fundamentalism that produces terrorism, even if those communities have antibodies that try to combat that specific symptom. If this analysis is correct, then in order to win the war against Islamization we need to find some way to clarify both the difference *and* the connection between Shari and terrorism, rather than appearing to equate the two. Does that make sense? -- Ernie P. -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
