Letters to the Editor
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Can we make it better?
We won't be able to do the most important thing to better our relations with Muslims for another 17 months. Then the healing can start, if the current occupant doesn't ry to do something stupid in his last two months. There was supposed to be a PR initiative led by Karen Hughes, but that seemed to fizzle from the beginning. I think that the administration has just given up on any attempts to better relations. The one thing that would be total disaster would be an attack on Iran,
The comparison between the economic and social situations of American Muslims and European Muslims might not be fair. Many of the most recent Muslim immigrants have been wealthy to start [Iranians that helped the shah loot the country] or have advanced degrees, many of the degrees obtained in the US. They have joined the professional ranks and are making high salaries. Comnpare this situation to European Muslim where a much higher percentage are undereducated and poor. The analogous situation to the european immigrants would be undereducated and poor Latinos who come illegally to this country looking for any kind of economic opportunity.
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I have an urgent question
Illustrating the lack of costs that come with such expressions is the story of Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin, who in a 2003 speech compared his faith with a Muslim's by stating, "I knew that my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol." Boykin has since been promoted; today he is deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence.
When the government engages in self-parody, what are the cartoonists and writers left to do?
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While I Love Optimism . . .
. . . this ("if the current occupant (of the WH) doesn't try to do something stupid in his last two months . . . ") just isn't going to happen. I would go as far as to say, the current occupant (are you talking about the Wizard or the man behind the curtain??) will go out of his way to do something stupid. I also doubt whether the subsequent occupants will go much out of their way to stop demonizing / scapegoating Islam. Hell, hate sells real well, and it does tend to rally your average schmuck around the flag . . . .
I hate to be cynical, but I have seen the enemy, and he is us.
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I can tell you what NOT to do
"When the government engages in self-parody, what are the cartoonists and writers left to do?"
Whatever they do, they had better not depict Allah in a cartoon. Because if they do, then the world will see again the tolerance that is Islam.
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"Vapid Prejudice Against Islam?" Really?
You state that, "it'll be impossible to win hearts and minds in the Muslim world as long as a vapid prejudice against Islam continues to grow in our political discourse and on our airwaves."
Pause. "Vapid prejudice?" "Win hearts and minds in the Muslim world?"
Alexis de Toqueville nearly 200 years ago wrote:
"I studied the Kuran a great deal. I came away from that study with the conviction that by and large there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as that of Muhammad. So far as I can see, it is the principal cause of the decadence so visible today in the Muslim world and, though less absurd than the polytheism of old, its social and political tendencies are in my opinion more to be feared, and I therefore regard it as a form of decadence rather than a form of progress in relation to paganism itself."
Any reasonably intelligent person can read the Koran and Hadith for themselves and study history for how Islam has been applied and enforced over the last 1,400 years, and continues to be.
Your slur that telling the truth about Islam is "vapid prejudice" rings as hollow as somebody suggeting, back in the '30s, that Mein Kampf would lead to no good.
Or would you suggest that we better had tried to "win hearts and minds" of Nazis?
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@RobertGlass
De Toqueville lived two centuries ago, among other handicaps. Can you come up with any "students" of Islam or the Middle East or the "Kuran" who are more on top of what's happening right now? And if you do, perhaps that student of the present might remind you that Naziism was not a religion but was, in fact, an anti-religion.
But when the monsters have already arrived here on Maple Street there is not likely much that can be done to keep people like you from getting a rope or some gasoline.
Thanks for rising to the challenge. It's no wonder we're so screwed.
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A beacon?
Was the US in the Cold War really a "beacon on the hill of freedom"? Tell that to the people of Chile, East Timor and Central America.
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Wordplay
Thomas Jefferson more than 200 years ago wrote:
"Is uniformity attainable? Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced an inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth."
Any reasonably intelligent person can read the Bible for themselves and study history for how Christianity has been applied and enforced over the last 2,000 years, but thankfully not longer is [primarily due to the Enlightenment, the analogue of which has not occurred with Islam].
Suggesting other than that Christianity is a violent, dangerous religion rings as hollow as somebody suggesting, back in the '30s, that Mein Kampf would lead to no good.
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What is Truth?
I can't foresee Islam melting into the American pot so long as internal debates over whether the Koran mandates killing its opponents are on the increase. I'm happy that some brave scholars advocate a pacific interpretation of Koran, but for every one of them 10 others are going from regular guy to holy warrior seemingly overnight. Isn't something terribly wrong with a religion that can do that to people?
I also wonder what about American culture could possibly beguile a young Muslim rooted in the moral certainties and structure of his faith. How could America possibly temper Islam as it circles its wagons against her savage immorality? And how could America possibly answer a young Muslim's question, "Here's my faith, where's yours?"
To assimilate, Islam must change. For good or ill, this has been the American way. But so long as modern, secular America and the West offer few reasons for a Muslim to change his religious convictions, we will see, as we see in France, increasing Muslim entrenchment and radicalization.