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Why is the Muslim world so easily offended?
Washington Post ^ | 09/15/2012 | Fouad Ajami

Posted on 09/15/2012 7:17:03 AM PDT by SeekAndFind

Modernity requires the willingness to be offended. And as anti-American violence across the Middle East and beyond shows, that willingness is something the Arab world, the heartland of Islam, still lacks.

Time and again in recent years, as the outside world has battered the walls of Muslim lands and as Muslims have left their places of birth in search of greater opportunities in the Western world, modernity — with its sometimes distasteful but ultimately benign criticism of Islam — has sparked fatal protests. To understand why violence keeps erupting and to seek to prevent it, we must discern what fuels this sense of grievance.

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.

In the narrative of history transmitted to schoolchildren throughout the Arab world and reinforced by the media, religious scholars and laymen alike, Arabs were favored by divine providence. They had come out of the Arabian Peninsula in the 7th century, carrying Islam from Morocco to faraway Indonesia. In the process, they overran the Byzantine and Persian empires, then crossed the Strait of Gibraltar to Iberia, and there they fashioned a brilliant civilization that stood as a rebuke to the intolerance of the European states to the north. Cordoba and Granada were adorned and exalted in the Arab imagination. Andalusia brought together all that the Arabs favored — poetry, glamorous courts, philosophers who debated the great issues of the day.

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Foreign Affairs; News/Current Events; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: 911ii; 911iiislammovie; islam; islammovie; muslims
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1 posted on 09/15/2012 7:17:10 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind

Simple. Insecurity.


2 posted on 09/15/2012 7:18:54 AM PDT by mosaicwolf (Strength and Honor)
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To: SeekAndFind

What else are the sand monkeys going to do?


3 posted on 09/15/2012 7:20:28 AM PDT by cripplecreek (What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul?)
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To: SeekAndFind

It has nothing to do with what the West does or does no do. Even if the USA never existed, Muslim nations would be backward, poor, corrupt and violent.

Their unhappiness and radical politics is rooted in their own retrograde culture


4 posted on 09/15/2012 7:21:14 AM PDT by PGR88
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To: SeekAndFind

Truth in religion results in spiritual and psychological maturity. This is why Judaism and Christianity produce holy people. Islam teaches the least truth of the major religions. Islam produces infantile personalities.


5 posted on 09/15/2012 7:22:37 AM PDT by Arthur McGowan (In Edward Kennedy's America, federal funding of brothels is a right, not a privilege.)
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To: PGR88

Nothing I would like more than to put a wall around the entire muslim world and let them go back to killing each other over damp spots in the sand.


6 posted on 09/15/2012 7:24:00 AM PDT by cripplecreek (What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul?)
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To: SeekAndFind

I think Christians, Jews, Mormons and most all are offended when their religion is disrespected and attacked. The Muslims are no different there, they just lack impulse control. Isn’t that the PC way of saying one acts like a jack azz?


7 posted on 09/15/2012 7:26:21 AM PDT by Irenic (The pencil sharpener and Elmer's glue is put away-- we've lost the red wheel barrow)
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To: mosaicwolf
You nailed it. Deep down, these Islamic maniacs have doubts about the truth of their faith. Subconsciously they suspect that they are spewing nonsense. That is why any criticism is responded to with violence. A normal person, secure in their faith, just shrugs off as irrelevant any video, art, whatever that attacks their faith. The Islamic maniacs are showing their lack of faith in their actions. Any normal and secure thinking person would laugh off the video in question as a joke. Instead they are so insecure in their beliefs that they must lash out in order to suppress their own doubts.
8 posted on 09/15/2012 7:28:15 AM PDT by gusty
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To: SeekAndFind

What utter PC muslim koolaid bulls#!t.

“In the narrative of history transmitted to schoolchildren throughout the Arab world and reinforced by the media, religious scholars and laymen alike, Arabs were favored by divine providence. They had come out of the Arabian Peninsula in the 7th century, carrying Islam from Morocco to faraway Indonesia. In the process, they overran the Byzantine and Persian empires, then crossed the Strait of Gibraltar to Iberia, and there they fashioned a brilliant civilization that stood as a rebuke to the intolerance of the European states to the north. Cordoba and Granada were adorned and exalted in the Arab imagination. Andalusia brought together all that the Arabs favored — poetry, glamorous courts, philosophers who debated the great issues of the day.”


9 posted on 09/15/2012 7:29:04 AM PDT by Travis McGee (www.EnemiesForeignAndDomestic.com)
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To: SeekAndFind

10 posted on 09/15/2012 7:29:23 AM PDT by jaz.357 ( *Luke 6:43-45* Twas Ever Thus!)
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To: SeekAndFind
Mohammed's resume was that of a bandit chieftain and the religion and the ethics it teaches were purposefully cobbled together with the goal of controlling and governing increasingly large confederations of bandit tribes. The main problem today is that the bandit-tribe model of society was bypassed by events several centuries ago.

Worse, adherents' entire lives are wrapped up in that religion to a greater extent than is the case with any other religion and the extent to which the rest of humanity views the religion as a bunch of BS, particularly in an internet age, has to get to them.

11 posted on 09/15/2012 7:30:43 AM PDT by varmintman
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To: SeekAndFind
To understand why violence keeps erupting and to seek to prevent it, we must discern what fuels this sense of grievance.

Seek to prevent it? The article is a laundry list of Islamic insanity and offers no solution. They are stuck on resentment and enjoy their pity party.

12 posted on 09/15/2012 7:31:13 AM PDT by CaptainK (...please make it stop. Shake a can of pennies at it.)
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To: SeekAndFind

Why does bums and ghetto trash are that easily offended?
They are deeply unhappy and have a few to lose. Psychologists calls it frustration.


13 posted on 09/15/2012 7:31:54 AM PDT by cunning_fish (.)
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To: SeekAndFind
They're not offended....They're just looking to place the blame for their murderous cult on someone...

Religion???

Islam is not a religion. It is a political system. The goal is world domination and "kill all the Christians and Jews".

Obama said nothing when a mass of Coptic Christians were killed.

And that's what happens when you have a Muslim president.

14 posted on 09/15/2012 7:32:00 AM PDT by Sacajaweau
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To: SeekAndFind

So contrary to the propaganda of the public schools and the (m)ass media, the Crusaders and “intolerant” Christians did not engineer the decline of islime: the Turks and Mongols did.


15 posted on 09/15/2012 7:35:42 AM PDT by IronJack (=)
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To: SeekAndFind

-——They had come out of the Arabian Peninsula in the 7th century, carrying Islam from Morocco to faraway Indonesia. In the process, they overran the Byzantine and Persian empires, then crossed the Strait of Gibraltar to Iberia, and there they fashioned a brilliant civilization that stood as a rebuke to the intolerance of the European states to the north. Cordoba and Granada were adorned and exalted in the Arab imagination. Andalusia brought together all that the Arabs favored — poetry, glamorous courts, philosophers who debated the great issues of the day.-——

Mostly Arab historical fantasy....

Me thinks he forgot a few things like the conquered people’s being dhimmis, or forced conversion upon pain of death, rape and pillage of christian women and culture, destruction of everything not found in the Koran...

I could go on.... But their was only so much bandwidth...


16 posted on 09/15/2012 7:36:27 AM PDT by Popman (In a place you only dream of Where your soul is always free)
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To: SeekAndFind; Travis McGee; Pelham

because they are a primitive culture despite the canards we get from academia about their rich traditions which mostly happened prior to Islam

primitive peoples are easily agitated into pandemonium on the streets

having a lot of experience in the third world I am convinced that primitive cultures lacking much education (or hope...real hope)

are more superstitious and believe any rumour

and that the men in particular reach a stunted level of reasoning maturity

I used to stand on the deck of my cargo ship in Miragoane Haiti and watch basically illiterate and I’m sure hungry men unload rice and cement and beans by hand 1000s of tonnes and be amazed at how childlike their animations and expressions and temperament were...the slightest provocation and they had tantrums

I witnesses similar behavior in Sierra Leone

I know no one likes hearing this but some cultures are better RULED than RULING

it’s a hard world out there folks and most Americans are so ignorant with their daft notions of cultural relativity or nay...Western European cultural inferiority


17 posted on 09/15/2012 7:38:15 AM PDT by wardaddy (this is a perfect window for Netanyahu to bomb Iran..I hereby give my go ahead..thanks Muzzie idiots)
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To: Irenic

——I think Christians, Jews, Mormons and most all are offended when their religion is disrespected and attacked. The Muslims are no different there, they just lack impulse control. Isn’t that the PC way of saying one acts like a jack azz?-——

Not to be rude.... But you need to do a bit more research on the Islamic mind..their issues for lack of a better word has very little to do with lack of impulse control...

They have a serious superiority complex based on book which pretty much gives them license to wreck haven on the world to prove how superior they are....among other things ...


18 posted on 09/15/2012 7:41:40 AM PDT by Popman (In a place you only dream of Where your soul is always free)
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To: SeekAndFind

Because they think it’s ALL(ah) about them.


19 posted on 09/15/2012 7:46:42 AM PDT by equaviator (There's nothing like the universe to bring you down to earth.)
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To: SeekAndFind

Plain and simple -
Islam is a Political. Main objective is to conquer others.
Followers of Islam trust Imam /Clergy for everything. Imam/ Clergy use average muslims as a tool.
Caliphate is their dream forever.


20 posted on 09/15/2012 7:47:04 AM PDT by jennychase
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