Gary, please review PBS’ documentary: Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet and prove you are not a hypocrite of the worst kind. If “history” should not ignored in this case (to promote a NeoCon as you charge), then should history (as well as basic morality) concerning mass murder and slavery be ignored to push a leftist/multiculturalist apologetic about Islam..

In Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet the goodly leftists at PBS make chilling apologetics for Mohammed’s brutal conduct. Most notable among these is the massacre and enslavement of the Banu Qurayza, a Jewish tribe. Despite having no basis in the exclusively Islamic texts from which this history comes to us (think about that, Muslims nonchalantly report the ‘Seal of the Prophets,’ ‘the perfect man’ overseeing the systematic murder and/or enslavement of several hundred people), the PBS documentary tries to pin the blame on Jews themselves vis-à-vis Deuteronomy. Karen Armstrong also makes sickening apologetics for this crime in her biography of Mohammed.

As always I must state I am not a Jew, Christian, Republican, Fox News watcher, NeoCon, and realize the Bible is a work of great violence, so let’s please limit the discussion to Islam. Islam is I suggest either defensible on its own merits, regardless of what Christians, the Bush Administration or Israelis do, or not defensible at all from a rational, egalitarian, human rights-based perspective.

I basically call out you and anyone who supports human rights and liberal values to condemn the disgusting moral equivocation the Left engages in frequently when analyzing Islam. Salon merely becomes the leftist equivalent of Fox News when it publishes pieces like your article tonight. Don’t become so twisted by hatred of George Bush & Co. that you become as strident, arrogant and lacking in self-examination as they are.

“…because people like missac and Victoria L. are too busy shouting down any rational conversation with charges of anti-semitism.”

“It's really sad that even on one of the brightest places on the internet, any chance at a real discussion of the issues is subjugated to knee-jerk reactionary charges of anti-semitism and west-bashing.”

Thanks Zoroastrian for your completely false libel. I did not in at any point level a charge of anti-Semitism against Kamiya or any person here. Your dishonest characterization of my comments is insulting and your inability to quote any of my alleged “knee-jerk reactionary charges” is very telling.

“Nowehere did Gary blame the US or Israel for all the problems in the world. If he even mentioned anything akin to it, it was in the context of an Arab/Muslim worldview - and not one he endorses.”

What a slippery, disingenuous comment on your part. ‘He never did that, except he did, but he didn’t mean it.’ Kamiya’s entire premise is that the historical realities. i.e. Israel and colonization. explain the socio-political situation in the Muslim world. He has made this clear in piece after piece here at Salon. I don’t discount the role of historical factors, but feel they must be analyzed in light of the simultaneous sense of entitlement and victimhood which Islam inculcates in its followers.

Besides I would think a Zorastrian would know what it is like to be on the receiving end of the 'Religion of Peace'...but the historical issues of Islamic cultural imperialism, wars of aggression and slavery are verboten topics with a lot of 'liberals'.

"fleeing the campus"??? *sigh*

Thanks for more out-of-touch, hysterical leftist nonsense which will just make mainstream liberals look like fools to the nation at large.

I love how Salon 'proves' how 'not-racist' they are by having a laser-light focus on race at every turn. This "fleeing the campus" garabage is your lead article on the events at VT and you just happen to have choosen a lead photo with a person of East Asian ethnicity crying.

The only people I see making a big deal about him being Korean, are well...leftist multiculturalists looking for another reason for self-flagellation. Stop using this horrible event for your wider policial motives.

...could I find a writer making a veiled moral equivocation between those women in the US who voluntarily diet to meet an arbitrary standard of beauty versus young girls being beaten into gaining weight in Mauritania.

Bringing up these totally unrelated issues together is just a PC sop so that Joan Walsh doesn't blow out an eardrum reading criticism of a non-White, non-Christian culture at Salon (the Mauritanians follow the 'Religion of Peace' so tread lightly Ms. Price).

Besides being underwieght my not be optimal, but is better than obesity in studies I've seen. I do honestly believe women choose to be objectified in the US. If a woman in this day and age dispite her educational, economic and political opportunities fritters away her health and commonsense on diets pills, breast implants and the like, well....

That's a harsh pill for lefists to swallow because nothing upset their political agenda like a victim group responsible for their own troubles.