None, of course.
Did looking at him tell the people he lived near whether he was good or evil? He didn't go around screaming in the street and bombing infidels in his neighborhood, did he? How do the people he dealt with in NJ feel about him now?
Did the BTK killer tell people he lived near whether he was good or evil? Ted Bundy? Timothy McVeigh? Did they go around screaming in the streets and killing people out in the open first? Do I need to go on? You want some magical measure by which we can sort good people from evil people, a convenient black hat or white hat to sort the heroes from the villains. I'm sorry but such a convenient way to sort good people and evil people doesn't exist, no matter how badly you want it to.
So the terrorist of 9-11 were considered 'good neighbors' by people like you, and not suspected based on his religion and what it says about infidels? How does blind trust like that make you feel when it cost all those lives?
Plenty of Muslims are good neighbors. A few weren't. The Able Danger hearings show that the United States government had the means to distinguish good Muslims from bad Muslims before 9/11 but wasn't allowed to.
There are plenty of ways to prevent another 9/11 without deporting everyone who is Muslim. And even if we were to deport or exclude every Muslim, how would we know we were successful? Why can't a Muslim lie about his faith? Or do you also propose that we deport and exclude anyone who looks Eastern European (Chechyans and Albanians), Middle Eastern, Persian, Indian, Indonesian, Malaysian, or African (Morocco, Libya, Egypt, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Kenya, etc.) just in case someone who looks like that is really one of those cagey Muslims lying about his faith? And then how do we stop the John Allen Muhammads and John Walker Lindhs of the world? How can you know for certain that anyone isn't a closet Muslim waiting to practice their jihad on you?
You have to look at the Muslim without the rose-colored glasses that are the mark of those who want to avoid a truth that may be too ugly- and too large- to deal with cleanly.
I think there are plenty of ugly things on the horizon. I think a nuclear exchange between Israel and Iran is not out of the question. It still doesn't make me want to round up Muslim people who pose no threat to me or you, even if you don't believe such Muslims exist. You can go on about what they secretly think all you want. The truth is that anyone could be hiding a dark soul and Muslims don't corner the market in that department.
And comparing the fringe/extreme elements of other religions is fine until you come to the part where the ONLY religion that boldly states it must dominate, is Islam. It is also the only 'religion' ENFORCING that belief through bloody means, globally.
The religion ENFORCES itself? That's a nice trick.
Evil people are selling a certain brand of militant Islam through violent means. What they are doing doesn't require religion. It's not all that different from how any other militant group gets people to fall in line. It's a fascism problem (which is why I think Islamofascism is a very appropriate term for that particular subset of Muslims).
The whack-job people like Jim Jones, or backwoods preacher types, aren't crying 'Jihad' on the world, or hacking heads off on TV.
I find it ironic that you claim Christians aren't calling for a "jihad" when that's essentially what you are calling for against all Muslims. Yes, I know. You think "they" started it first. Who are "they"? A small fraction of Muslims who are fanatics, not every Muslim man, woman, and child.
If I say I'm a Christian, people have the right to assume that I believe that for which Christianity stands-and they have to right to judge me by it.
Why should they? How do they know you aren't the next BTK killer in hiding? He certainly claimed he was a Christian and women died for years because his friends and family trusted he was a good person.
Same goes for you if you are a Mason, or a Democrat, or a Hassidic Jew, or even a Boy Scout troop leader.
There are plenty of people (I'm not one) who are convinced that the Masons behave exactly the way you accuse Muslims of behaving -- that they hide their true selfish and evil agenda behind lies. I can dig up some web sites if you want. How can a Mason prove they aren't lying to those conspiracy theorists? They can't, because you can't prove a negative. As for Boy Scout leaders, how many of them have taken advantage of their positions to molest boys? Do you feel guilty because the trust you and others have placed in Boy Scout leaders has allowed quite a few young boys to be molested? How about all of the children molested by priests and ministers who were trusted by their congregations because they said they were Christian and said all the right things?
Again, you can't know for certain that anyone isn't lying to you or that they won't abuse your trust. That's how Evil people operate, whether they are Muslims or not. If you really want 100% certainty and 100% safety, you are never going to have it, no matter what class of people you surround yourself with because people in a class don't act identically. They are individuals that do their own thing.
You refuse to judge Muslims by the scripture they hold sacred; giving them every excuse to be duplicitous. Why such latitude with words plainly written in the Koran?
Not all Muslims hold that particular bit of scripture as sacred, a point you and others repeatedly ignore. But even if that were not the case, the latitude is warranted by the fact that I do not observe the close correspondence between a persons professed faith and honestly that you seem to believe exists. Just because a religion has a doctrine does not mean people follow it. Plenty of Christians lie, divorce, commit adultery, dishonor their parents, and so forth. How can I tell with certainty if a Muslim is a liars? I can't. How can I tell with certainty if a Christian is a liar? I can't. And that uncertainty, alone, is no reason to deport all Muslims or keep them out of the US. I simply evaluate Muslims by their behavior, the same way I evaluate Christians -- by their behavior rather than worrying about some deep and dark agenda that they might have hiding in their heart. People did notice that something wasn't quite right with Atta and the other hijackers. They just didn't act on it.
Yes- there are bad members of every religion; but on the planet, right now, ISLAM is the 'religion' causing wholesale terror.
Several sects of Islam are, indeed driving terror. That's not all of Islam. Your attempts to identify the threat are not the problem. The overly broad brush you are painting with is. You are hunting a wolf with a nuclear bomb.
Don't compare isolated street thuggery with organized crime, or the perverse bad 'Christian' who becomes a serial killer with training camps for terrorists, or countless Muslim mothers who can't wait to sacrifice their children for Allah.
The Muslim training camps are less about Islam than about fanaticism. The Nazis got people to sacrifice themselves the same way for their race. Pol Pot got his followers to murder 1.7 million of their countrymen based on class jealousy. Are the fanatics a problem? Absolutely. Hunt them down and exterminate them. But that doesn't justify mistreating Muslims who aren't fanatics and such Muslims exist, regardless of what the doctrine of their religion says.
The serial killer was one man, killing a small number, and his religion will call him evil and reject him as a Christian. There was no permission for his deeds in his place of worship.
The point you keep missing is that the permission just doesn't matter all that much. You don't need Islam or the permission of God in your religion's doctrine to be a murderer or part of a violent murderous movement. At the other end, plenty of Muslims aren't violent murderous thugs. There is no 1:1 correlation between Islam and evil murderers, not even between Islam and evil organized mass murderers.
You are trying to say:
Islam justifies lying, therefore all Muslims are liars. Islam justifies killing infidels therefore all Muslims want to kill infidels.
The fallacy of that argument can be illustrated by the inverse claim:
Christianity condemns lying, therefore no Christians are liars. Christianity condemns murder, therefore no Christians are murderers.
Things just don't follow all neat and tidy like that.
The religion of the 9-11 terrorists, and every barbarian executing people, calls them martyrs and elevates them to revered status.
There are certainly Muslims who all them martyrs and elevate them to revered status. There are also Muslims who condemn what they did and think they are garbage. Not all Muslims are the same. They don't all speak in one voice.
Whether or not your local Muslim shopkeeper will obey them, the words in the 'sacred Koran' DO encourage the bloodshed we are seeing! There is PERMISSION for it in mosques, and in the Koran.
It is not the permission that's driving the killing. It's the imams and leaders who encourage that behavior. And if my local Muslim shopkeeper isn't interested in obeying them, then he's not my enemy and I see no reason to treat him like one. Further, I'd consider it mighty unjust if you or anyone else did.
It IS about religion, no matter how you try to talk around it. Our enemies know why they hate and attack us, and they say it over and over- RELIGION.
It is, at least in part, about religion. It's also about culture and other ideologies. But the religious part isn't as broad or monolithic as you are painting it. Wahabbists are certainly a problem. The ruling Iranian clerics are certainly a problem. Lots of other Muslims are not a problem.
And I would rather distrust EVERY potential Mohammed Atta out there, and be wrong, than trust them and be proven wrong when more Americans die.
Would you rather distrust EVERY potential BTK killer out there, and be wrong, than trust them and be proven wrong when more women are tortured and murdered?