Gents,
you all raise some valid points. Yes there is violence in Islam, yes Muslims do very bad things in the name of Islam. Yes there is terrorism and intolerence and injustice in the name of Islam. We don’t deny any of these arguments but we should take an honest unbiased look at the situation.
Muslims in the post Ottoman-empire world are struggeling for identity and leadership, we are broken up into dozens of factions and schools of thought, each with it’s own moral codes and interpretation of the Qur’an. You have the Sufi Muslims who are as peaceful as they come but are considered to be infidels by the majority of Sunnis and many Shia. The majority of Muslims in the world are either Sunnis ~80% or Shia ~20%, and within the two groups you have dozens of factions, the wahabis, the salafis, the shafiis, the hanafis, the malikis, the hanbalis, the zaidis, the Ja’faris, the Ahmadia, the usoolis, the isma’ilis, the bohras and the list goes on. So, it’s fair to say Muslims do not speak in a single united voice. We don’t have a single agenda which unites us.
Additionally, Muslims have also been and continue to be victims of Western Imperialism and interest. Thousands of Muslims around the world suffer and die as a result of western government policies and actions. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children died as a direct result of the sanctions against Iraq enforced by the U.S. Hundreds of palestinian families had thier homes leveled by Israeli bulldozers to make way for settler development with american approval. Hundreds of palestinian children go blind every year from Isreali sniper bullets fired at their eyes without a peep from the western media. Many many children in Iraq and Afghanistan are born with deformities and health complications from the depleted uranium left behind by American and other western military. And many many more suffer every day at the hands of their own dictator governments that are supported and propped up by Western democracies. Are they also not innocent vicitims or do their lives simply don’t have any value? Let’s not delegitimize thier plight either, they’re also human and their lives matter.
Make no mistake, I don’t agree with the Muslim Terrorist, but I understand his motivations. In their mind, they are responding in kind “an eye for an eye” to the western atrocities commited against Muslims. In their eyes, American and British governments kill muslims and then cry foul when a muslim blows himself up killing American or Brits.
The majority of Muslims out there are confused about their identity and don’t have any clear leadership to look up to for answers. So you have some muslims supporting the terrorists, you have others that denounce the terrorists, you have people on the fence who don’t konw where they stand and finally you have Muslims who are too busy worrying about their situation to even think about any of this.
I feel that Islam is at a crossroads between ideologies, there’s an ideology that promotes hatred, intolerence, and violence and there’s an opposing ideology that promotes peace and peaceful means to conflict resolution.
actually my friend, we have our extremist on both sides that do this. i dont think he is looking for them to be shut down, i think he would like to see a counterbalance of information to refute what he is hearing. being neither a republican nor a democrat, i can laugh at extremist on both sides, and see the good people in each of these parties working toward a better tomorrow. hes actually taken a well reasoned approach to his argument. and he is someone who you can have some very good dialoug with. Peace