Staghounds is a blogger who just doesn't blog enough.
I added him to my sidebar a couple of months ago because he says things, and presents perspectives, which nobody else can offer.
And I don't read his work as often as I should. Maybe he'll take the hint and blog more frequently, but that may not be the best solution; unlike others I could name, he writes when he has something to say. I could learn from him.
A month ago, he wrote about the Moslem reaction to Islamic Extremists. I'm reading what he says, and it is encouraging that Moslems are denouncing the murder of innocents.
In this one instance, his take is much more positive than mine.
Here's why:
This morning I was listening to the radio while I was getting ready for work. I listened to the Laura Ingraham show, on a station which I have tuned in on my alarm-clock/radio because her voice is so irritating that I am driven from my bed. (This is important, because I am NOT a "Morning Person"!)
A representative of the American Moslem Community was the guest commentator, and he was saying all the right things, until he hit a bump in the ideological road. I don't have direct quotes for the whole thing, so some of this should be taken as a paraphrase. (I'm not willing to pay six bucks a month to the Laura 365 Club to access the transcripts. Perhaps a reader who does have the membership can find the transcript and forward it to me.)
He said:
The world has a problem with the extremists, and moderate Moslems are the only ones who can do something about it. We represent a religion of peace ... When we have Moslems strapping bombs to their bodies and blowing up people, some of them Moslems, then .....
(emphasis added)
and he lost me there.
"Some of them Moslems".
THAT is the problem.
I have yet to hear a clear, unequivocal Moslem denouncement of terrorists blowing up people. There's always a qualifier. In this statement, the qualifier is that "some of them (are) Moslems".
What has that to do with anything? Sure, it's a shame that Moslems are being killed by their own people ... both in the sense of adherence to a religious belief and frequently in the sense of common membership in a national/cultural/geographic group.
The way these statements are worded, they give the impression that the priorities are:
(a) we're killing our own people, and that is not justified by the effort to achieve a goal, or
(b) it's not that we think it's wrong to kill people, but it's wrong because it makes all Moslems look bad.
Why can't we hear just ONE Moslem spokesman say:
"It's wrong to kill people. Even killing declared combatants is deplorable, but there is a group of Moslems who feel justified in killing ANYBODY, even non-combatants, in the most horrible manners imaginable. We Moslems must speak out against this and make it clear that we do not support terrorism or murder regardless of the espoused cause and regardless of the religion of the victims."When I hear that kind of statement, which doesn't equivocate and doesn't present a sense of outrage based on the fact that members of their religion are adversely affected by terrorist actions, then I'll begin to believe that "Moderate Moslems" are equally as horrified as the rest of the world.
Until that day, I can't accept the proposition that "Moderate Moslems" are all that moderate.
They cleave to a sense of "Them" versus "Us", and until non-Moslems are unconsciously accepted "Them" as part of "Us" there is no real credibility in the concept of Moslems being part of a community which is being equally preyed upon by the terrorists.
Until that day, the Radical Islamists (?) will continue to assume, and rightly, that they have at least tacit approval and support from ALL Moslems.
Anything less is just bullshit. Damned insulting bullshit, at that!
2 comments:
What do you expect from a religion whose founder beleived that the word should be spread by the sword?
Outstanding example of "reading between the lines." I, too, look closely at the rhetoric; it's a tell-tale!!
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