"a sick man—a very sick man," a "man" who "has fallen into a state of decrepitude, ... gravely ill".Islam has spawned a sick culture. It is not normal or healthy to stone adulteresses, behead "infidels," collapse walls on homosexuals, chop off hands, or bomb and burn and murder at every perceived slight. It is sick.
And please, those of you who enjoy defending Islam, spare us the crap this time. It wasn't Copts who did this latest violence. It wasn't Zoroastrians who stormed the US embassy in Tehran and took Americans hostage. It wasn't Hindus who brought down the World Trade Center. It was all done by Muslims.
Muslims Must Learn the Golden Rule
Having a murderously jealous religious chauvinism is very unhealthy, for themselves and those who have the misfortune to become embroiled in their churlish and hyper-sensitive controversies. For a people so given to hair-trigger screaming grievance at any less-than-reverent treatment of Islam, they sure enjoy trashing the religions of others, often by arson and murder. If they want to be respected and treated like adults, they need to start acting like adults and respect the religious rights of others.
The events in Benghazi created a major opportunity for President Obama to speak out about an important problem that afflicts a significant segment of the Muslim world: an inability to recognize that it is not just its religion that deserves to be respected.
The president had an opportunity, and still has the opportunity, to call upon Muslim leaders to teach those who heed their words that they accord to others the same respect for the heritage and practices of other religions that they rightly expect for their own. (Dov Zakheim)
Why are Muslims so easily offended?
There is an Arab pain and a volatility in the face of judgment by outsiders that stem from a deep and enduring sense of humiliation. A vast chasm separates the poor standing of Arabs in the world today from their history of greatness. In this context, their injured pride is easy to understand.Walter Russell Mead does his usual excellent work putting these violent events in context. Much of it is about local politics...
[...]
Younger Arabs today can be brittle and proud about their culture, yet deeply ashamed of what they see around them. They know that more than 300 million Arabs have fallen to economic stagnation and cultural decline. They know that the standing of Arab states along the measures that matter — political freedom, status of women, economic growth — is low. In the privacy of their own language, in daily chatter on the street, on blogs and in the media, and in works of art and fiction, they probe endlessly what befell them. (Why is the Muslim World so easily Offended?)
Moderates who speak against violence or try to cool matters look like American puppets; this is the kind of issue the radicals love, and we can expect them to milk it for all it is worth.He goes on to caution people like me who tend to say to hell with them. That's what the 7th century Muslim extremists want: To drive an even greater wedge between Islamic society and modernity. The obscurantists want to keep the people ignorant, superstitious and suspicious.
I saw it myself as I sat at Bagram prepared to go into Pakistani Kashmir after that big earthquake in 2005. We had whole field hospitals and Satcom systems with phone banks so people could call their families and tell them they were ok. We had food and medicine, but Pakistan told us no.
They saw how our stature increased in Indonesia thanks to the aid we provided after the tsunami. They did not want their people cosying up to Uncle Sam or, Allah forbid, to stop hating America. So we complied with their request and put no personnel on the ground and dropped anonymous packages from the sky.
As we've seen in Libya, even helping them topple a dictator and putting in an Arabic-speaking ambassador who genuinely admires the culture doesn't move the pegged needle on their hatred dial.
As we've seen in Libya, even helping them topple a dictator and putting in an Arabic-speaking ambassador who genuinely admires the culture doesn't move the pegged needle on their hatred dial.
They are sick, but the cure must come from within. As a man over at HuffPo wrote to his fellow Muslims, It is now Time to Grow Up
