The bluntly-named group "Stop Islamization in America" has posted signs on the sides of metro buses across the country this summer, reading: "Fatwa on your head?" and "Leaving Islam?" Pamela Geller, who heads the organization, says she just wants to help out Muslims endangered by their own religion.
Funny: I don't believe I've seen any signs yet reading: "Priest molesting you in the confession booth? Leaving Catholicism?"
There is a new and disturbing trend towards Muslim bashing in the United States. If it continues apace it is likely to help stir up a real national "clash of civilizations." Too bad. The American Muslims I know are some of the most open-minded and tolerant practitioners of the Islamic faith.
Witness Newt Gingrich's bizarre stance on the planned Muslim community center two blocks from the World Trade Center with a mosque on one floor: "There should be no mosque near Ground Zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia," he contends.
Is he saying we should be just as intolerant as some of the world's most authoritarian governments? It certainly sounds like it.
Folks jumping on the anti-Muslim bandwagon this summer might like to recall that America's founders stressed religious tolerance for a reason: Minority faiths deserve the same protection as all faiths, particularly because they are likely to be the first ones persecuted by the majority. Maybe that is why Thomas Jefferson bothered to read his own Koran. The father of the nation, George Washington, harbored no anxiety towards other religions on American soil. In one instance, he wrote this to his agent about hiring workmen at Mount Vernon: "If they be good workmen, they may be from Asia, Africa, or Europe; they may be Mohammedans, Jews, or Christians of any sect, or they may be Atheists."
Gingrich and his brethren are now trying to stir up new fears about Islam in America. His clique has little credibility, however.
In the build up to the Iraq War, Gingrich, like many in his set, missed the story inside that nation on how Saddam's own policies had kept the al Qaeda genie in the bottle. Gingrich wrote a column in USA Today, entitled: "Strike Sooner Than Later." He played a key role in driving the U.S. into a bungled invasion that was unrelated to the 9/11 attacks, cost at least one trillion in U.S. tax dollars and helped further the false impression that America was at war with Islam. Not surprisingly, as CNN's Peter Bergen later documented, in the wake of the invasion of Iraq, terrorist attacks around the world rose by a factor of 600 percent.
Now this discredited gang is warning Americans to be bold and courageous and step up to the threat of "Islamization" posed by the world's 1.2 billion Muslims. Gingrich claimed recently at the National Press Club that his own grandchildren live in fear of legions of suicide bombers anxious to invade American soil.
His real message: Brace yourself for endless confrontation. Never mind the motivations for Islamic terror and how America's own naïve actions in the Islamic realm helped create the Frankenstein we are facing abroad.
Both Gingrich and Geller have fertile ground to make political hay. Nearly half of all Americans believe that Muslims are prone to violence, according to recent polling data. Others openly doubt the loyalty of Muslim Americans. With the constant warnings on Fox News and other cable stations that we must watch our back abroad and at home, it is little wonder that so many Americans remain a bit terrified of the "other."
Americans need to take a deep breath. Not unlike fringe Christian groups, only a small percentage in the Islamic realm subscribe to any kind of violence at all. Islam is not creeping into American classrooms and undermining the way our children think. The very notion that we should fear this is reminiscent of Senator McCarthy's "red baiting" tactics.
In my researching my book, My Brother, My Enemy from Sahelian Africa through the Holy Land, South Asia and onto Indonesia, I discovered that it is the hyperbolic language in the West -- the use of such absurd phrases as "Islamo-facism" -- that helps stir the passions of young Muslims, many of them already disenfranchised by their own governments. Worse, when we pay lip-service to such talk, we are essentially elevating the fringe element within Islam to an undeserved level of international prominence. Indeed, Al Qaeda loves this language because it plays into their own "us versus them" propaganda cycle.
As for this "clash of civilizations" that Gingrich and Geller are pushing, our foes must be saying, "Bring it on!" It should be no wonder that when we go hunting for false specters, we create the kind of monsters we fear the most.
Fortunately, there is another direction -- the American way. Lest we be fooled again, there are encouraging signs out there. There is an expanding moderate middle in Islam; one that Americans and their politicians should be encouraging and paying far more attention to than the fringe. National polls in the largest Arab country, Egypt, for example, show that four of five Egyptians believe that democracy is a very good system of government.
Likewise, Americans should be wary of the damning message that it sends across the globe when leading American politicians like Gingrich argue to curtail their shared religious freedom, a cornerstone of our tolerant nation.
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http://www.unelected.org/2010/07/21/socialist-of-the-week-newt-gingrich/
He voted for the Department of Education and was the man who got NAFTA and GATT passed through Congress!
there are some in the Muslim world who admit Islam has already failed; never to catch up with the West. That word, Nihilism, is being mentioned. Its a spirit of Facism absorbed from Nazism: if all cannot be conquered, then all should be destroyed!
There was a time in this country when "God-fearing Christians" were burning crosses on lawns and bombing churches filled with children, to preserve state's rights. Then, bigotted, white, respected men, stoked the fears and hatred of uneducated, poor folks. These "pillars of their communities" (citizen's councils or sovereignty commissions) gave orders and paid others to do their dirty work (rape, intimidate, kill those who were pro civil rights), while they cowardly hid, consealed their involvement, lied and kept agitating more dissention, division in their locales. Those who were caught and punished for hate crimes suffered, while those who incited the violence were never implicated.
Now, we have many zealots doing the same in this country, again: homophobia, xenophobia, Islamophobia, etc. While these "respected" leaders, journalists, talk-show or radio personalities are stoking fears, hatred, bigotry, and suggesting violence (2nd amendment solutions, don't retreat-reload, painting cross-hairs or targets on opponent's locales, etc.), they know full-well someone will take their inferences literally, as already evidenced by the murder of Dr. Tiller, but will contend they never meant what they implied or called for such actions.
They're no more than cowards and hypocrites. If they're truly Christian, they'd recall Christ forgave adulterers, thieves and those who crucified Him, but despised and condemned hypocrites.
Among the expansionist groups in our country:
a) Islam. This is not a sit still religion. No does it seek co-existance. It's entire history is engulf and devour.
b) Mexican Colonization. Mexican nationals are colonizing the US with impunity and even the acquiescence of a Democrat government that needs lots of low paid bodies to show up at the polls and keep them in office. This group shows wants to carry its culture and government across the border, and even superimpose it on US/English culture. They feel they have a right to do so.
c) Sexual Agenda. The Sexual agenda disparages any exclusive two person heterosexual relationship and its motto seems to be "make room for Daddy" especially if Daddy is a LGBT type who "just wants people to understand". It's not enough to have equality or rights, this group is also expansionist in every level of discourse and topics as diverse as film criticism and others. It needs a willing supply of new adherents to keep the party going, so don't expect to be able to stay in your single-taste lifestyle without being pestered.
"It appears that conservatism has pathological dimensions manifested in violence and distorted psycho-sexual development" (Boshier, 1983). This is supported by a study conducted by Walker, Rowe, and Quincey (1993) in which there was a direct correlation between authoritarianism and sexually aggressive behavior. An investigation done by Muehlenhard (1988) revealed that rape justification and aggression toward subordinate individuals was much higher in traditional (conservative personality) than non-traditional personalities.
Conservatism is not the doctrine of the intellectual elite or of the more intelligent segments of the population, but the reverse. By every measure available to us, conservative beliefs are found most frequently among the uninformed, the poorly educated, and the less intelligent"
Conservatism and Personality. American Political Science Review, 52, 27-45
1. Don't discuss the issues when you can disqualify your opponent.
a) You need to explain your knowledge of Islam's 'history' better.
b) I've never known a colonization run that started because the government and society of the 'colony' was more palatable than the home country.
c) This is is just patently absurd. When the LGBT come to my house and start telling me that 'breeders' are wrong then maybe you'll have some traction. A once a year parade of questionable taste does not a dangerous movement make.
b) Coming to America for a better job does not mean you want to adopt our culture.
c) You are right, he is wrong.
grammatically should be:
"Nor does it seek..."
This sentence is an example of what is wrong with the article.
"In a 2007 University of Maryland poll (PDF), more than 60 percent of the populations in Egypt, Morocco, Pakistan, and Indonesia responded that democracy was a good way to govern their respective countries, while at the same time, an average of 71 percent agreed with requiring "strict application of [sharia] law in every Islamic country."
http://www.cfr.org/publication/8034/islam.html”
That's the whole showing from the poll, without biased editing.
There is nothing vague about it and it varies from one school of jurisprudence to another, not country to country. A follower of the Shafii school in Maylaysia is following the same law as a Shafii follower in Egypt.
I can provide quotes and sources if you want.
Remember the Lord inspired the angles with the message "I am with you; give firmness to the believers. I will instil terror into the hearts of the unbelievers. Smite ye above their necks and smite all the finger-tips off them.
This because the contended against God and his Apostle. If any contend against God and His Apostle, God is strict in punishment.
Thus: "Taste ye then of the punishment for those who resist God, is the penalty of the fire."
Wives, be subordinate to your husbands, as is proper in the Lord. (Colossians 3:18 NAB)
So this is what the LORD Almighty says about them: "I will punish them! Their young men will die in battle, and their little boys and girls will starve. Not one of these plotters from Anathoth will survive, for I will bring disaster upon them when their time of punishment comes." (Jeremiah 11:22-23 NLT)
Withhold not chastisement from a boy; if you beat him with a rod he will not die. Beat him with the rod, and you will save him from the nether world. (Proverbs 23:13-14 NAB)
So it is with a woman who leaves her husband and presents him with an heir by another man. For first of all, she has disobeyed the law of the Most High; second, she has committed an offense against her husband; and third, through her fornication she has committed adultery and brought forth children by another man. She herself will be brought before the assembly, and her punishment will extend to her children. Her children will not take root, and her branches will not bear fruit. (Sirach 23:22-25 NRSV)
"And that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams, shall be put to death; because he hath spoken to turn you away from the LORD your God..." (Deuteronomy 13: 5)
"If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast not known, thou, nor thy fathers;" (Deuteronomy 13: 6)
"Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him: But thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people." (Deuteronomy 13:8-9)
"Thou shalt surely smite the inhabitants of that city with the edge of the sword, destroying it utterly, and all that is therein, and the cattle thereof, with the edge of the sword." (Deuteronomy 13:15)
I don't believe that I have heard of 19 Priests flying planes into American buildings and killing thousands of people.