Saturday, February 18, 2006

Flopping Aces � Blog Archive � No Such Thing As A Moderate Muslim

Flopping Aces � Blog Archive � No Such Thing As A Moderate Muslim

TAG: Fascist Principle 3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying

Ok, now I’ve seen everything. [1] The LA Times has an editorial that actually, wait for it, displays some common sense:
ANOTHER WEEK, another Muslim country burns in rage over months-old Danish cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) in an unflattering light. On Friday it was Libya, and earlier in the week it was my father’s homeland, Pakistan, where violent protests were scattered across the nation. Some Muslims have decided that burning cities in defense of a prophet’s teachings, which none of them seem willing to practice, is preferable to participating in rational debate about the myths and realities of a religion whose worst enemies are increasingly its own adherents.
This week’s events should compel those of us who claim Islam as our system of philosophical guidance to ask hard questions of ourselves in order to revive the religion’s essential foundation: justice, peaceful and tolerant coexistence, compassion, the search for knowledge and unwavering faith in the unity of God.
[…]The first truth is that most Muslim ideologues are hypocrites. What has Osama bin Laden done for the victims of the 2004 tsunami or the shattered families who lost everything in the Pakistani earthquake last year? He did not build one school, offer one loaf of bread or pay for one vaccination. And yet he, not the devout Muslim doctors from California and Iowa who repair broken limbs and lives in the snowy peaks of Kashmir, speaks the loudest for what Muslims allegedly stand for. He has succeeded in presenting himself as the defender of Islam’s poor, and the Western media has taken his jihadist message all the way to the bank.
The hypocrisy only starts there. Muslims and Arabs have done pitifully little to help improve the capacity of the Palestinian people to be good neighbors to their Israeli brethren. Take the money spent by any Middle Eastern royal family at a London hotel or Geneva resort during one month and you could build enough schools and medical clinics to take care of 1,000 Palestinian children for a year. Yet rather than educate and feed Palestinian and Muslim children so they may learn to settle differences through dialogue and debate, instead of by throwing rocks and wearing bombs, the Muslim “haves” put on a few telethons to raise paltry sums for the “have nots” to alleviate the guilt over their palatial gilded cages.
The second truth — one that the West needs to come to grips with — is that there is no such human persona as a “moderate Muslim.” You either believe in the oneness of God or you don’t. You either believe in the teachings of his prophet or you don’t. You either learn those teachings and apply them to the circumstances of life in the country you have chosen to live in, or you shouldn’t live there.
[…]In fact, the most glaring truth is that Islam’s mobsters fear the West has it right: that we have perfected the very system Islam’s holy scriptures urged them to learn and practice. And having failed in their mission to lead their masses, they seek any excuse to demonize those of us in the West and to try to bring us down. They know they are losing the ideological struggle for hearts and minds, for life in all its different dimensions, and so they prepare themselves, and us, for Armageddon by starting fires everywhere in a display of Islamic unity intended to galvanize the masses they cannot feed, clothe, educate or house.
This is not Islam. And the faster its truest believers stand up and demonstrate its values and principles by actions, not words, the sooner a great religion will return to its rightful role as guide for nearly a quarter of humanity.
The writer, [2] Manzoor Ijaz, has been speaking out against fanatical Islam for quite some time so his opinion is not that huge of a surprise. That my local Socialist paper would run it IS a surprise. But still, no sign of the cartoons on their pages.
Article printed from Flopping Aces: http://www.floppingaces.net
URL to article: http://www.floppingaces.net/?p=1355
URLs in this post:[1] The LA Times: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-ijaz18feb18,0,6492979.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions[2] Manzoor Ijaz: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,46241,00.html

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