Letters to the Editor
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Mona & Rushdie
Mona, you are not a biggot. But, when you make your points about the trouble with Islam, you should make your distinctions between Islam and radical islam clearer. You don't have to, but it would be help. (as evidenced by shooter having mistaken you for one of his ilk).
Rushdie is not just a victim of Islam, he is also a product of it. So was Rumi and many other free thinkers. That is testimony to diversity within Islam, which, unfortunately, has to actually be spelled out to shooters. Don't feed them.
The vast majority of Muslim in America are either atheists, agnostics, or those who do not wish to practice Islam the way their mufti or mullah or Imam dictates back home.
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Blog, not English 101 Paper
It was your follow up, you know, the last paragraph that I quoted that I don't get. Syntax, grammar, the usual suspects. Does not compute. Unnerstand?
-- totallyblase
Versus:
However, here is one real person, one real woman, in a real Muslim nation, who does not appear to believe that her cause of moderation, equality, and democracy in her society will be advanced by simplistic screeds that Islam against whom all civilized peoples must battle or die.
Why did you find this passage difficult? Do you normally require that English teachers sit beside you, helping you diagram English sentences before you comprehend?
Here's a simplified version for the diagrammatically disabled:
Here is...one...who does not...believe that her cause...will be advanced by simplistic screeds.
Better? Able to read now, with a warm bottle of milk to make it go down better than the coffee which makes you jittery?
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Mona
Your invitation to discuss Islam is intriguing, notwithstanding your proclamation of distance from me. Was it, for example, the practice at the time to consummate the marriage before the age of 10? Because I understand that the revealed and direct word of God said that his last and greatest prophet did that.
Shall we discuss Islamic doctrine or practice first? Both of them are relevant to Glenn's article. (Apologists for Islam may want to start typing up their ad hominems now.)
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Stalker Boy
Shall we discuss Islamic doctrine or practice first? Both of them are relevant to Glenn's article.
-- Golden Boy
You're not only a bigot but you're a stalker also. She asked you to fob off.
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FYI... on Charlie Rose...
...tonight's lineup:
a panel on Karl Rove (Paul Burka of the Texas Monthly, with Jay Carney, Washington bureau chief for Time Magazine, John VandeHei, executive editor of The Politico.com and Mark Halperin, editor at large of Time Magazine.)
Markos Moulitsas: "...it makes no sense to talk about left and right."
also, Anthony Cordesman on "what the American policy has done in Iraq - its achievements and its many failures."
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Kristol on Daily Show: Guess what he says???!!!!!
That supreme JACKASS is on The Daily Show right now, and you will all be SO SURPRISED at what he is saying.
Jon said to him, well you just came back from an eight-day trip to Iraq, and let me guess what you are going to say...."It's going well," right?
So of course Kristol says yes, and then--here is the best part--he says, "Don't trust me, trust the skeptics, like O'Hanlon..."!!!!!
Priceless.
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@ El Cid
I presented a summarized speech from a Muslim woman arguing about what is needed to preserve and extend democracy in her society. Which is a Muslim society. Which is currently under attack from many directions, including from Islamic rebels.
And you are to be commended for having done so.
Please, do comment on the advantages of tolerance, compromise, and mutual respect, and even kindness, on achieving a diverse, stable, and constructive society.
I can tell that this is what you'd really like to do.
And I can also tell that extremists on both sides could hate you for it, until you can persuade them to consider the advantages of tolerance, compromise, and mutual respect, and even kindness. Or unless you can persuade them.
But how to do that? This is one of Swift's paradoxes: how to get the Big-Endians to cooperate with the Little-Endians? In this case, you may not be able to, because intolerance is not the root problem here.
US right-wingers don't really have a problem with Muslim extremism because they're more than happy to exploit Muslim extremism when it can help them to exploit a situation. The problem is that our oil somehow ended up under their sand. And US corporatists want that oil, and therefore want control of that part of the world. They said so. It's policy. For some reason people in that part of the world aren't so keen on the idea of being brutalized into submission so they can be robbed. Right-wingers have no idea why.
And so forth. It's like this:
Western Asia wouldn't be a problem if they didn't have all that oil.
Mooslims are evil and need to be exterminated because they won't let US corporatists pillage them freely. Islam has different deficiencies, largely the result of Muslim-style control-freak religious and political wedge issues, as compared to US-type religious and political wedge issues, as you know.
But you're still to be commended.
Thanks.
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@Denning
But, when you make your points about the trouble with Islam, you should make your distinctions between Islam and radical Islam clearer. You don't have to, but it would be help. (as evidenced by shooter having mistaken you for one of his ilk).
Rest assured shooter does not mistake me for being of "his ilk." I've been commenting at Glenn's blog virtually since its inception at blogspot, and after only a few rounds with shooter there declared him a troll, and haven't replied to any of his imbecilities in something like a year.
We had a discussion of the Danish Cartoons back at Glenn's old blog, and my position then was as it is now, namely, that just because of the deranged rhetoric from the Professional Islamophobes, that does not diminish the fact that there really and actually is a problem with radical Islam. Those extremists kill people in order to, among other things, chill Western speech. But that is no reason at all to start wars all over the Middle East, and will only manufacture yet more Muslim extremists.