How to Win Friends and Convert People
At a debate about the nature of Islam, a young radical (not to be confused with a New Radical) Muslim declared "We drink the blood of our enemy" and declaring that Muslims everywhere are in a war against the West and Mohammed's message to non believers was "I come to slaughter all of you." If anyone can find the place in the Qu'ran where this is said, please leave a comment. If anyone can find anywhere in the Hadith where the Prophet MIGHT have said it, please leave a comment. Of course, this did not stop Omar Brooks, who calls himself Abu Izzadeen (which is rough Arabic for "Father of the Honorable Way"), from going on about the necessity of England following Sharia, without that whole Democratic process thing. He also advertised in British newspapers to multiple wives so he could father at least nine children. The really good news about this is that for once, moderate Muslims have been standing up against this crap.
That's all this is, crap. This has as much to do with real Islam and the actual teachings of Mohammed as Hitler does with the teachings of Christ and Christianity. People finding reasonsto kill other people, and socio-religious factors seem to be the best options for these guys. Now, granted, these guys are based out of England, which has a history of not being the most religiously tolerant country. This is a country with one official religion and people have to indicate religion in censuses (censi?), add into this what can be viewed as a tradition of not integrating non-native groups into their society. While, yes, this is not the Victorian era and things are a lot more multicultural than have been, but there is still a sense among the Middle Eastern or Asian Muslim community in England that they are not fully welcomed part of the community. America might have the best record of integration, and we've had lots and lots of conflict on this subject.
Now there is another side in the conflict. No longer is it just 24 using Arabic Muslims (even if a Muslim in the world is more likely to be Far Asian, but that's not the point) as generic terrorist bad guys, but there are moderate Muslims speaking out about how horrifying to their religion it is that a tiny, tiny minority are using a religion that says specifically "compulsion shall be no part of religion" as means for hatred. Many, many places in the Qur'an deride the killing of innocents, killing of people who believe differently, having blatant disrepsect for Jews and Christians and generally forcing conversion by the sword, gun, bomb or what have you. Islam, as practiced by more than 99% of Muslims worldwide, does not encourage violence any more than Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism or Buddhism does. Just like 99% of Southerners have a strong dislike for the KK, and yet when the South is mentioned in the media, so often the KKK or other institutionalized racism is brought right to the fore.
And that's the problem right there, not the people who follow a religion but the people who report on the people following the religion. For example, take MEMRI for example. A group that translates news articles "of Arabic, Persian, and Turkish media" into English in order to "[bridge] the language gap which exists between the West and the Middle East". While this is a laudable goal for any organization, and it provides a large a number of articles from newspapers between Anakara and Almaty. But, they don't provide an address for fear of suicide bombers. Which sounds odd for an organization which seeks to bridge people. So after digging into who owns MEMRI, the British newspaper Guardian came up with some interesting answers. To sum up the article, it's run by a former Colonel of the intelligence sectioni of the Israeli military and was later a counter-intelligence adviser to two Prime Ministers. Half of the people who worked there in 2002 were former Israeli military of some stripe, as it were. Looking through the articles, one gets a feeling of how every person in the Middle East not in Israel wants to destroy every last Israeli, Jew or person who could possibly be either Israeli, Jewish or supporter of either.
Note, this is not saying that just becuase a person is Israeli, Jewish or possibly supporting of either they can't provide an accurate translation; in fact the people who do MEMRI are very skilled translators, they are accurate as can be. However, would the average American trust a service that translates American media sources into Farsi if the owners and operators were former members of the Iranian military? NO! And, well we shouldn't. If a person sees an entire issue through just one lens, or in this case jsut one group's translations, then that person is being, what we call in the blogging world, an idiot. Watching just Fox News and counting it as representative of American political thought is just as accurate as counting on just MEMRI as a source to all that is Middle Eastern media. After all, present the extremists has always been good for business.
The middle moderate Muslims have always been there, but too many reading Western media wouldn't know it. We all got way too interested in the extremes of everything to really find out what is going and what other people actually believe. It's a heck of a lot easier to just say "yeah, yeah Muslims, they just want to kill us because they hate us for out freedoms and their evil little book tells them so". It's just easier to think in terms of black and white, if they're against us then they must hate us. Since we hate them irrationally at times, they must hate us just as irrationally. So, we go on saying terrible things about each other, we find someone to translate them accurately, the other side hears them and assumes they are the whole of the society.
Not realizing, we are often only seeing the asshole of the society.
So it is written, so do I see it.
PS congratualtions to Senator Webbfor being picked to deliver the rebuttal to the State of the Union on Tuesday. Second year in a row a Virginian has delivered it.
That's all this is, crap. This has as much to do with real Islam and the actual teachings of Mohammed as Hitler does with the teachings of Christ and Christianity. People finding reasonsto kill other people, and socio-religious factors seem to be the best options for these guys. Now, granted, these guys are based out of England, which has a history of not being the most religiously tolerant country. This is a country with one official religion and people have to indicate religion in censuses (censi?), add into this what can be viewed as a tradition of not integrating non-native groups into their society. While, yes, this is not the Victorian era and things are a lot more multicultural than have been, but there is still a sense among the Middle Eastern or Asian Muslim community in England that they are not fully welcomed part of the community. America might have the best record of integration, and we've had lots and lots of conflict on this subject.
Now there is another side in the conflict. No longer is it just 24 using Arabic Muslims (even if a Muslim in the world is more likely to be Far Asian, but that's not the point) as generic terrorist bad guys, but there are moderate Muslims speaking out about how horrifying to their religion it is that a tiny, tiny minority are using a religion that says specifically "compulsion shall be no part of religion" as means for hatred. Many, many places in the Qur'an deride the killing of innocents, killing of people who believe differently, having blatant disrepsect for Jews and Christians and generally forcing conversion by the sword, gun, bomb or what have you. Islam, as practiced by more than 99% of Muslims worldwide, does not encourage violence any more than Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism or Buddhism does. Just like 99% of Southerners have a strong dislike for the KK, and yet when the South is mentioned in the media, so often the KKK or other institutionalized racism is brought right to the fore.
And that's the problem right there, not the people who follow a religion but the people who report on the people following the religion. For example, take MEMRI for example. A group that translates news articles "of Arabic, Persian, and Turkish media" into English in order to "[bridge] the language gap which exists between the West and the Middle East". While this is a laudable goal for any organization, and it provides a large a number of articles from newspapers between Anakara and Almaty. But, they don't provide an address for fear of suicide bombers. Which sounds odd for an organization which seeks to bridge people. So after digging into who owns MEMRI, the British newspaper Guardian came up with some interesting answers. To sum up the article, it's run by a former Colonel of the intelligence sectioni of the Israeli military and was later a counter-intelligence adviser to two Prime Ministers. Half of the people who worked there in 2002 were former Israeli military of some stripe, as it were. Looking through the articles, one gets a feeling of how every person in the Middle East not in Israel wants to destroy every last Israeli, Jew or person who could possibly be either Israeli, Jewish or supporter of either.
Note, this is not saying that just becuase a person is Israeli, Jewish or possibly supporting of either they can't provide an accurate translation; in fact the people who do MEMRI are very skilled translators, they are accurate as can be. However, would the average American trust a service that translates American media sources into Farsi if the owners and operators were former members of the Iranian military? NO! And, well we shouldn't. If a person sees an entire issue through just one lens, or in this case jsut one group's translations, then that person is being, what we call in the blogging world, an idiot. Watching just Fox News and counting it as representative of American political thought is just as accurate as counting on just MEMRI as a source to all that is Middle Eastern media. After all, present the extremists has always been good for business.
The middle moderate Muslims have always been there, but too many reading Western media wouldn't know it. We all got way too interested in the extremes of everything to really find out what is going and what other people actually believe. It's a heck of a lot easier to just say "yeah, yeah Muslims, they just want to kill us because they hate us for out freedoms and their evil little book tells them so". It's just easier to think in terms of black and white, if they're against us then they must hate us. Since we hate them irrationally at times, they must hate us just as irrationally. So, we go on saying terrible things about each other, we find someone to translate them accurately, the other side hears them and assumes they are the whole of the society.
Not realizing, we are often only seeing the asshole of the society.
So it is written, so do I see it.
PS congratualtions to Senator Webbfor being picked to deliver the rebuttal to the State of the Union on Tuesday. Second year in a row a Virginian has delivered it.