Mark Steyn: They want to kill us all

The Spectator (U.K.) ^ | 10/19/2002 | Mark Steyn

[Hobsonphile]

Believe me, I really want to believe in the existence of Muslim moderates. I have trouble imagining that Muslim girl at my old bus stop down in Baltimore is really in favor of jihad. I don't want to imagine it. But Muslim voices speaking out against Islamofascism are disturbingly few and far between. I think I've encountered exactly two in my reading.

[lady lawyer]

It isn't nonsense. I have worked among Muslims. I have educated Muslim friends who respect me as I respect them -- and they understand that I am a devout Christian. I have traveled in Muslim countries and met the educated class who very much want to adopt the positive things from modern culture, but want to avoid the degenerate aspects. I have met Muslims who have said they look to religious Americans to show them how to do that.

These people have been dealing with horror from the Islamists a lot longer than we have. They refer to them as "those people." But they don't want their children swallowed up by the degeneracy they see in Western media.

[Snake65]

Well put.

This one is worth a bookmark.

[rintense]

Mark is spot on once again!!!!

[rintense]

Mark is spot on once again!!!!

[denydenydeny]

Indexing.

[steve-b]

I have traveled in Muslim countries and met the educated class who very much want to adopt the positive things from modern culture, but want to avoid the degenerate aspects.

Gee, that's too bad. If they'd taken effective steps to clean their house, rather than wait for us to have to clean it for them, they would have been in a position to influence their culture's development.

[Brad’s Gramma]

The more I read about Islam, the more I'm convinced it's religion is forged in the fires of hell.

It is.

[null and void]

Has even ONE of your Muslim friends been willing to publicly state that 9/11 was a bad thing? (without following it with a but the USA deserved it)...

[lady lawyer]

Absolutely. I have had some ask me how they could help the US.

[null and void]

Extraordinary! Name one.

[lady lawyer]

Why do you want names? I'm not lying. But I wouldn't give you their names, for obvious reasons, including -- it's none of your business.

[lady lawyer]

Remember, when they arrested the Buffalo 6, law enforcement publicly gave credit to members of the Muslim community that had turned these guys in.

[null and void]

One name. Because in the 13 months since the WTC Collapes I have yet to find a single Muslim willing to do this. Far be it from me to even consider the possibility that a lawyer would lie.

I'd like to publicly name this person on an FR thread, with the intent of doing a fund raiser to get him or her air time to broadly and publicly repudiate the 9/11 attack. In his or her own words. I'd love for all of us to hear even ONE Muslim say NOT IN MY NAME.

Ask all of them if even one of them would be willing to do this.

It would be something they could do to really help both the US and all of peaceful Islam

[Pokey78]

You have been added.

[null and void]

I'm looking for someone who will publicly take a stand. Although I do appreciate the occasional anomalous anonymous telephone tip...

[JasonC]

Tell them to look for the tradition of al-Ghazzali in Islam, instead of the tradition of Ibn Taymiya. A powerful side by side comparison is Ghazzali on happiness vs. Taymiya on the difference between followers of "the Merciful" and followers of the devil. The former is recognizably religion and piety. The latter is recognizably ideological politics and bigotry.

With followers of Ghazzali the modern west could have a conversation, a civilized one, in which both sides would have something to say. With followers of Taymiya that is not possible; only war is possible. When they themselves learned the better parts of their own historical traditions and reject the evil parts, clean house within their own civilization, and read the Taymiya fanatics out of Islam as dangerous heretics and evil men, then we can indeed have a discussion about piety, morality, modernity, secularism, skepticism, etc. The Taymiya types are not interested in such a conversation. They just want to kill us, plain and simple.

[tessalu]

What is wrong with you? There are Muslim Sodomites and Muslim Lesbians, and I have met both. In Kandahar, the Muslim men have ashna's, or boy lovers, even when they are married with children. Muslims just hide things better, and most often do not make it public, for fear of punishment.

[Do Be]

add me to your ping list please

Bump

[lady lawyer]

I'm sure it goes on, but I have to believe there is less of it than in most other places. Afghanistan is a different animal. Most of the Muslims I know deplore what was going on in Afghanistan among the Taliban. It was an embarrassment to them.

One statistic that is hard to argue with is that the Islamic countries have the lowest AIDS infection rate in the world, by far.

It is also true that sodomy is against the law in most Muslim countries, and they still enforce that law.

If I were to guess, I would say that the tradition of boy lovers in Afghanistan is probably something local that has nothing to do with the Muslim religion, but which has persisted in spite of it. In that sense, it is probably something like female genital mutilation, that is still practiced by some tribed that have become Islamic, but is not part of the Islamic belief system.