Letters to the Editor
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But the Muslim world won't leave us alone, Gary
Muslims openly describe the Qur'an as a revelation intended for all of humankind. Just do some research if you doubt me. In that light there is no limit to Islam's ambition.
Islamic sources teach us that Muhammed made statements like "I have been ordered to fight with the people till they say, none has the right to be worshipped but Allah." (Al-Bukhari 4:196)
Bad news for the 80% of humanity who are not Muslims. Christianity is of course much the same, at least in its universalist ambitions, but Christianity and Judaism failed to effectively control critical inquiry into the Bible during and after the Enlightenment and has suffered immeasurably as a result. Attempts to analyze the Qur'an arein contrast met with threats and stone-walled by even non-Muslim academics.
By accepting the Qur'an as the inerrant word of god, a Muslim has effectively limited their self-critical analyses to one outcome: we're not Islamic enough. After all god is perfect, so the Qur'an must be perfect, and his messanger must be perfect, thus only deviation from this perfect revelation of god's will through a perfect agent can explain the political, economic and social failings of Muslim societies. Islam itself is irredoubtable in a Muslim's mind and yet how can people who aspire to complete subservience to a revelation ever properly exercise reason?.
The counterpart to this mindset is that some external agent the Jew, the Crusader and in recent times the American is actively preventing Islam's 'perfection' from being realized. People like Gary Kamiya in parroting the Muslim world's eternal excuse only help keep Muslims from much needed introspection, which however threatening to their faith just might offer them a rational path to self improvement.
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We need to be a Good Neighbor in the world
First, we need to publicly acknowledge that we have done some wrong things, such as subverting Iran's democracy in 1953 to control its oil. Second, we should renounce war as an instrument of foreign policy. Third, in fighting terrorism, we should devote as much energy to persuasion as we do to interdiction. Finally, we should strive once again to be a good neighbor in the world, and a role model for justice and compassion and democracy.
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As always...
GB confuses religion with history: "There is really no such phenomenon as Christian-Hindu violence, or Buddhist-Jewish, or any combination that you might choose to create other than these: Christian-Muslim, Jewish-Muslim, Hindu-Muslim, Buddhist-Muslim. I think it is not at all the response of a bigoted mind to ask why this might be."
It's because your field of vision is so terribly narrow. Just this past century, there was no lack of Christian-Jewish violence in Europe (ever hear of the Holocaust? Pogroms?). Back up a few more years and you have centuries of Christian-pagan violence throughout the New World. In Asia, no lack of Buddhist-Buddhist violence (e.g. China in Vietnam), and Shinto-Buddhist violence (Japan in China). Gee, it seems that if your hateful obsession is focused on Muslims, all you see is Muslim violence. What a surprise.
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WHAT?
"Well I know that half of you here believe that, hell half of you believe JFK is living in the secret moonbase with Tupac."
I thought it was Jimmy Hoffa and Evlis up there.
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response to Golden boy
You overstate the case.
For one thing, even in the past 10-20 years there has been a lot of religious violence in the world that has nothing to do with Muslims.
What about N. Ireland? The recent "troubles" were instigated by a Protestant clergyman, the Rev. Ian Paisley, against the Catholics of N. Ireland. For years violent conflict raged among Protestants and Catholics in the north, Catholics in the Republic of Ireland and was taken to England by frustrated Catholics who felt that their interests were not taken seriously. In any case, it was a religious conflict, it was very nasty, and it had absolutely nothing to do with Muslims.
In the Balkans the violence was started by Serbia, brought in Croatia and was directed AGAINST the local Muslims who are known as Bosnians. The Serbian anger at Muslims dates back to 1389 when the Serbs were defeated by the Ottomans.
Of course, the bloodbath of WWII had nothing to do with Muslims.
There are vicious civil wars all over the place, some still going on, some that have quieted down - the Shining Path in Peru, Maoist rebels rampaging in Nepal, bloody conflicts all over sub-Saharan Africa - Rwanda, Angola, Congo, Zimbabwe. It's true that there are Muslims in Africa but they are neither the source nor the object of these conflicts. China violently represses some of its minority populations, notably the Buddhist Tibetans and the Muslim Uighurs. In the long history of the USSR tens of millions died from bad and vicious government policies. None of it was started by Muslims. In China Mao was responsible for about 30 million deaths in the Great Leap Forward.
The widespread discontent in much of the Islamic world - both between Muslims and between Muslims and non-Muslims is partly the result of repressive governments, many supported by the US. We overthrew a democratic government in Iran in 1953. Why shouldn't the Iranians hold a grudge? We prop up dictators in Egypt and help them repress liberalizing movements in their own countries. Not so long ago we supported Saddam Hussein against the ayatollahs of Iran, although Saddam was the aggressor in that war.
In Afghanistan we supported the mujahidin against the Soviets. Once the USSR collapsed we lost all interest. Our support of religiously conservative warriors led ultimately to the rise of the Taliban. But we didn't care that women, especially, were being brutally oppressed. We only paid attention when bin Laden was able to launch the 911 attacks.
Something else that plagues the Muslim world is that Islam, generally speaking, has not yet undergone a liberalizing and modernizing transformation like the Reformation in Europe. And that was very bloody, but long enough ago that we don't think about it. To some extent, there's not much we can do to bring about the necessary modernization but we should not be stepping in the way. One of the results of our invasion of Iraq is probably going to be to set back religious tolerance and liberalization for decades. We could also give more credit to a country like Turkey. Ataturk, the founder of the modern Turkish republic, was an adamant secularizer. The Turks are still struggling with modernization and balancing the freedom of people to practice religion as they wish without slipping back into fundamentalism and repression by religious conservatives.
You're right that none of the longer history can be attributed to President Bush and the neocons etc. However, we can only go forward in time. Knowledge and understanding of a large context would be useful. But the Bushies explicitly reject reality and live in an ideological prison even worse than that confining most Muslims. So they're busy making the problem worse by the minute.
I offer this final observation. It seems to me that what is going on between Muslims and the west is a internal conflict among different interpretations of monotheism. The nastiness results more from our similarities than our differences.