Open Season on Islam

[McCamy Taylor]

"Durka durka Muhammed Jihad". Team America

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjlNKRkoITE&feature=related



We all know what happened. More telling is the reaction to what has happened. Some folks talk about sovereign rights. Some talk about national security. Some even call it a class war, between the capitalists and the socialists.

Then , there are those who talk about religion.

I. The “I” Word

In his piece about the attack on the Gaza relief flotilla, Jonathan Schanzer uses the “I” word four times.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/terror-finance-flotilla

This article from Israeli National News uses the “I” word 6 times, and throws in the “M” word and the “J” word (jihad) for good measure.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/news.aspx/137808

Glenn Beck and guest Joel Rosenberg use the “I” word 5 times, the “J” word once. Also “Mullah”, “anti semitic” and “Hitler” are tossed into the mix.

http://www.therightscoop.com/glenn-beck-interviews-joel-rosenberg-on-israel-flotilla-and-radical-islam

Mordecai Kedar uses the “I “ word 5 times, including a reference to “Islamisizing Turkey, which is ruled by a group that is ideologically identical to Hamas”.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3896611,00.html

There you have it. Yesterday’s military action is ok, because the targets were “Islamisizing”.

II. When Religion Becomes a Dirty Word

We all know that the “I” word is dirty. Why else would so many Republicans have tried to pin it on Democratic Presidential candidate Obama?

Muslims and Islam remain a popular past time for the US media and some prominent religious and political leaders who never miss any opportunity to attack Muslims and their faith in the name of extremism. Unfortunately, in the post-9/11 America, Islamophobia is not only more widespread but more mainstream and respectable.

Boston Globe columnist Derrick Z. Jackson’s article titled “Holding Muslims at Arm’s Length” best reflect how fear mongering and Islamophobia is being used in the 2008 presidential election. He points out that in his year-and-a-half-long run for president, Obama has visited churches and synagogues, but no mosque. Jackson answers to Obama’s meaningful reluctance to visit a mosque when he quotes a Newsweek poll of May which concludes that only 58 percent of Americans think Obama is a Christian.

Tellingly, in July, The New Yorker magazine publishes a cover cartoon depicting Barak Obama, wearing traditional Muslim dress, while his wife, Michelle, is dressed in combat trousers and carrying a machine-gun. This cover legitimizes the rumors regarding Obama. It is not a satire but promotes fear, stereotypes and racism.

American Muslim community was dismayed at the Islamophobic rhetoric at the Republican Party Convention that ended in St. Paul, Minnesota on September 4, 2008. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani in their speeches made bigoted remarks that equated Islam with terrorism.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/American-Muslims-seven-yea-by-Abdus-Sattar-Ghaza-080911-29.html

Why else would Wolf Blizter/Liz Cheney call the DOJ the “Department of Jihad” for supplying lawyers to terrorism suspects?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/05/wolf-blitzer-apologizes-f_n_488257.html

Why would an American organization call for the outlawing of the religion—in direct violation of the U.S. Constitution which guarantees freedom of religion?

CAIR noted that the blogger is a former employee of the racist group Society of Americans for National Existence (SANE). On its now members-only website, SANE offered a policy proposal that would make it illegal to be a Muslim: “Whereas, adherence to Islam as a Muslim is prima facie evidence of an act in support of the overthrow of the US. Government through the abrogation, destruction, or violation of the US Constitution and the imposition of Shari’a on the American People…It shall be a felony punishable by 20 years in prison to knowingly act in furtherance of, or to support the, adherence to Islam.”

http://www.cair.com/ArticleDetails.aspx?ArticleID=26095&&name=n&&currPage=1&&Active=1

We all remember—most of us with shame---how a group of Imans were detained at a U.S. airport.

http://www.startribune.com/local/11585901.html

Their crime? They were exercising their Constitutionally protected right to practice their religion by praying in an airport. How many times have we seen nuns and priests praying in public places? Were they ever kicked off their plane/bus/train for doing so? Clearly, the expression of religion is not frowned upon in this country. So, the problem must be in the religion itself.

Note that the man who sent all the (Muslim) detainees to Guantanamo, where their Korans would be defiled made a distinction between the religion of Islam and terrorists who just happened to be Muslim.

Bush: As we work together to defeat the terrorists, we must be very clear about the enemies we face. The killers who take the lives of innocent men, women, and children are followers of a violent ideology very different from the religion of Islam. These extremists distort the idea of jihad into a call for terrorist murder against anyone who does not share their radical vision, including Muslims from other traditions, who they regard as heretics.

http://mediamatters.org/iphone/research/201005280003

The same Media Matters article describes how the usual right-wing suspects went ballistic when an Obama administration official tried to say the same thing. Everyone knows that jihad is Arabic for “Blow them to Kingdom come!” Lord only knows how Arabic speakers translate the word “evangelical”. “Depleted uranium” perhaps?


And remember, Turkey is a secular democratic state (i.e what we are) and has been one for almost a century.

[jdlh8894]

1. "Turkey is a secular democratic state (i.e what we are)"

Please explain.(i.e.what we are) Who are "we"?

[McCamy Taylor]

6. Us. The U.S. Home of the Democratic Party.

I am expecting to see Turkey get roasted over an open fire sometime in the next few days. Armenians, Kurds---all the people no one can usually be bothered worrying about will become les causes celebres. Oh, and references to Turkey being an ally of the Germans in the war---without a mention of what war the two were allied in.

[polly7]

2. These Islam attackers aren't doing themselves any favours.

I had always believed as a young adult Islam was a bad religion, knew nothing about it ... just jumped to conclusions because of statements I'd never checked out. The more they slam it now, the more thinking people research it and surprise ...... it's no more violent or much different than Christianity and lumping all Christians in with the terrorist kind. Make something or someone the underdog and you'll have many jump to support it once they learn the facts. I hope so, anyway.

[Chulanowa]

3. Happy to reccomend

I expect it to be a struggle to get this on the greatest page and stay there; many on DU are exactly what you're talking about

[jdlh8894]

4. Can you answer #1 ???

[Chulanowa]

5. I'm going to assume that since the poster is an American...

And is speaking to a majority American audience, and is referencing in large part events and opinions in the United States, that the "we" would be Americans. That is, the United States of America is a secular democracy, as is Turkey.

OP's grammar was a bit bad, it should be "as are we" rather than "i.e., what we are" - but that's what he's saying :)

[McCamy Taylor]

7. I like to throw in the odd colloquialism, to keep the prose from being too dry.

However, since you would write "We are a secular democracy" the Jeopardy question would be "What are we?"

[planetc]

9. OP's grammar is fine, also all Muslims I've met

In the OP, the phrase "secular democratic state" is a noun phrase, and the parenthetical explanatory phrase is perfectly within its rights in being a parallel construction, "what we are." "As are we", or "as we are" is also a parallel construction for the sentence itself ("Turkey is ...). Neither parenthetical explanation is more or less correct than the other. Just a reminder on the i.e., which I doubt Taylor needs, but since both id and est are abbreviated, it would be wise to put a period after each letter, and I like a comma to follow. Taylor makes the occasional typo, but considering the quality of prose she sustains through all of her posts, she clearly has forgotten more about grammar than many posters here ever knew.

And on the subject of Islam and Muslims, I have met rather more of them personally, in a couple of jobs I did before retirement, than some other Americans. A nicer, more civilized, more family-oriented group of people would be hard to find. One woman, who was a Kuwaiti living in America, responded to the invasion of her country by Iraq in 1991 (1990?), with considerable anxiety over the safety of her family at home, about whom she couldn't get news quickly. She responded to this situation by repainting the apartment she and her family were renting. It kept her hands busy, improved her rented real estate, and distracted her from her worries. This reaction, I suspect, is far more typical of Muslims in difficult situations than suicide bombing. Instead of making sweeping, and silly, generalizations about hundreds of millions of people, our punditry ought to develop the intestinal fortitude to invite a few Muslims to appear on their shows. And try to be polite. In fact, I'd say the average Muslim is far more civilized than Glenn Beck.

[Jim Sagle]

8. This must be Opposite Day.

[McCamy Taylor]

10. Please check out the news about Irish ship being disabled so that it would not be the first.

The pr possibilities are endless. Wouldn't want that "I" word to be "Irish."

[burnsei sensei]

11. I think that to despise and attack

Muslims and Islam generally is not democratic.
But to subject Islam to the same critique that Christianity has had to weather over the course of Western history is fair.
I don't embrace Christian doctrine uncritically.
And I wouldn't accept Muslim doctrines uncritically either.

[Ignis]

12. *kick* Don't sink, little thread! You can DO it!

:kick: