bin Laden

A Muslim Whines about the Image of Islam

The letter below came in my e-mail and is proof why Islam has such a bad image. Rashid whines about those that criticize Islam while he is silent on Islamist' terror and murder. He is a hypocrite just as much as those that attack Islam are. Let's look at his letter.

He whines because to him Jews seem to be treated differently than Muslims. There are plenty of people who hate Jews just as much as he does and both American and Islamic Jew-haters use each other's propaganda. Jews in America whine because the press is anti-Israel, Muslims whine the American press is anti-Arab. The facts are both are true. In a free nation people are allowed to say what they want without fear of being imprisoned, tortured, or executed like almost every Islamic nation on the planet. Muslims are not popular (except for liberal cry-babies who think anything but America is OK) because Muslims like Rashid make excuses and blames the victims.

Rashid whines because Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and Franklin Graham say bad things about Islam. They also say the same thing about Hindus, Deists, atheists, Jews, etc. Pat Robertson even attacks fellow Christians. While they are idiots, in America they have the right to say what they want (just like me) unless they incite violence or civil disruption. In Islamic countries just saying something critical of Islam is death. Ask Salman Rushdie on that one.

Rashid whines, "U.S. Attorney. General. John Ashcroft, an adherent of the "Christian right" whose principal ministers made these slanderous statements, did not investigate, let alone indict, these preachers for hate crimes" but doesn't have a clue to what America is about. Unlike Islamist countries, we don't jail or murder people over opinions.

Rashid whines because Muslims are under suspicion and thinks it's unfair. In WWII some recent German (white, Christian) immigrants and pro-Nazi groups were also under the cloud of suspicion. America will not allow another travesty that befell our Japanese citizens to happen to our Muslim citizens, but we do expect them to say loudly and without excuses they put America first. If Islam prevents that and is more important, just leave. We are at war and that is the least we expect. Your first loyalty is to America, not Islam, Judaism, or Christianity.

America doesn't hate Muslims but most Muslim hate America. The majority of our Arab and Islamic citizens are welcome here. Christians and Jews were forced to accept after 1776 that American Law is based on the rights of man and consent of the governed, not some alleged "word of God" from the Bible, Torah, or Koran. Most Jews and Christians had to put that law above their respective faiths and Muslims will be expected to do the same.

Most Muslims in America are wealthy and successful. But Muslims in general are religious bigots and many are intolerant of the very society that gives them freedom and opportunity they can get in no Muslim country anywhere on earth. As a group, their continued refusal to confront and denounce terrorism and Islamist hate and murder will generate mistrust of all Muslims. As long as even Muslims can't separate their religion from the Islamo-fascism and terrorism, they can expect criticism.

Questioning a religion or the actions and failures of a particular group is not hate crime. That means you can get mad if someone calls your religion a bad name, but there isn't crap you can do about it. Grow up Rashid.

Lewis Loflin

Rashid's E-mail

The slightest bit of anti-Semitism will be met with strong condemnation by the media and the rest of civil society--as it should. But not so for egregious vilification of Islam. Imagine if high visibility Muslim or Christian religious leaders would publicly state to the viewing and hearing of millions of Americans that: "Moses was a terrorist" and "Moses was a brigand and a robber", "Judaism is a monumental scam" and "Judaism is a very evil and wicked religion." The reaction would be overwhelming.

President Bush would probably address the nation from the Oval Office to denounce such an outrage, every major newspaper would run denunciatory editorials and TV and radio talk shows would continuously discuss the reasons and the remedies needed. In short, the nation would be swept by a tidal wave of social opprobrium--and rightly so.

But these outrageous and insulting statements were not made about Moses and Judaism, but about the Prophet Muhammad [PBUH] and about Islam. Substitute the first two quotes with "Muhammad" instead of "Moses" and "Islam" for "Judaism" and you would have what was actually said, in that order, by Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and Franklin Graham--all respected leaders of the "Christian right." Falwell made his statement on CBS' "60 Minutes" and Graham was the minister who delivered President Bush's inaugural prayer last year.

Reactions against these slanderous statements from the media and civil society were few, no massive outrage, no presidential denunciation, even though the president went to great lengths after Sept. 11 to assert that America's war on terrorism was not a war against Islam.

The measured tones of negative media and public reactions to these hateful attacks attest to the degree of social acceptability of these statements, even though some of the utterers proffered tactical retractions. U.S. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft , an adherent of the "Christian right" whose principal ministers made these slanderous statements, did not investigate, let alone indict, these preachers for hate crimes. He did not even publicly denounce their statements.

This in part explains why Muslims are notoriously targeted by the FBI and the Immigration and Naturalization Service and are frequently treated in the course of their interrogation and detention in a degrading and harsh manner, and nothing is done about it.

Power and influence are the currency of American society, those who have it and know how to use it succeed in advancing their causes, and those who don't remain disenfranchised. Native Americans and African-Americans have had a long time to learn that lesson. Now it is the turn of Muslims and Arab-Americans to learn it--the hard way.

The Muslim world does not fathom the peculiarities of American society. They think that if something is wrong, it should apply across-the-board. They see double standards in America's foreign policy and now domestically as well. They do not understand that if anti-Semitism is met with such opposition, it is substantially because American Jews, to their credit, make it their business to fight against it.

And they do not understand that since American Muslims are complacent about anti-Islamism, they will not be heard and that practice will go on. Above all, they do not understand why the Bush administration is silent against Islam-haters when it is trying so hard in its hopeless propaganda effort to win over the hearts and minds of the world's 1.2 billion Muslims.

Rashid

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