In the wake of Sweden's first suicide bomber, the blogoshere will no doubt fill up with stupid racists and stupid apologists. While pondering their useless points of view, it may be worthwhile to keep the following facts in mind:
Most practicing and believing Muslims are not jihadists. And basically the largest part of immigrants from the Muslim world are not practicing or believing Muslims. However.
Islam has serious problems in facing the modern world. It is a conquerors religion which has no room for honorable compromise – the world is in the eyes of Islam divided in Dar-al-Islam (House of Islam) and Dar-al-Harb (House of War). Period. No grayish, boring middle ground. The exceptions to this outlook (they do exist) remain an extreme minority, aggressively disregarded by mainstream Islamic practice and theory as formulated in Mecca or Cairo.
The only ones who can change this picture are peaceful religious Muslims in the West. And so far they aren't doing it. As long as they leave the interpretative privilege in the hands of preachers and theologians in the Arab world, nothing will happen. There is a misconception among religous Muslims in the West that this is not their problem, and that they can go to Mosque on Friday and listen to the same hate sermons, or political apologetics for hands-on jihad, as do the crazies, and somehow be home free because they don't kill anyone. I blame this to a large part on an Arab culture of conformism, lethargy and obedience to authority and authoritarianism. Another misconception is that ever so many Intellectuals from the Muslim world can bring about any change. They can't. They are secular. They have as much a say in the direction of Islam as has Barak Obama. It is only and solely the religious Muslims who can.
It doesn't matter how many non-believing or half-believing West-minded converts to Islam that fill the PC Media, whining about how Islam is at it's core a peaceful, yes almost radically pacifist, religion. It is simply not true. Islam has never been a peaceful religion. Islam, within 100 years of Muhammad's preaching to a small group of nomads in Mecca and Medina in present-day Saudi Arabia, conquered large part of the known world by the blade — by battle, murder, rape and forced conversion on pain of death. It is perfectly true that this conquest in time resulted in a flourishing Islamic culture in Spain and North Africa, a culture that would give us Algebra and useful numerals, and that was infinitely more tolerant than the Christianity that ruled the rest of Europe. This culture also saved for posterity the books of the great greek philosophers that the Christian cave men were burning. However, It was, and still is, the Warriors Religion par excellence. Theologically and theoretically Islam can be said to contain the concepts for the solutions to these problems, but they have not been used except in fairy speeches, of use to nobody. It's very simple, action talks, bullshit walks.
To be even clearer: Another, and even much more blood soaked religion, like Islam, spawned from Judaism, 2000 years ago. And it took the Christians some 1700 years to at least partially get their shit together and abandon their barbarism and blood thirst. Problem is though, our modern fast-paced age does not have this kind of patience. Nobody, meaning nobody, will accept another 200 years of Muslim suicide terrorism, before religious Muslims - in word an deed - loudly start asking themselves what the hell they are doing and what their leaders are saying.
It may be considered unfair that the Christians were given a longer grace period for their barbarism. But then again, the crusaders and inquisitors did not have the material privileges of today, such as the Internet, cell phones or computer. Nor the Atom Bomb.
Left wingers will no doubt claim the suicide bomber in Stockholm was a madman, possibly provoked into a psychotic state by the Islamophobia rampant in Europe (Islamophobia is indeed rampant in Europe). The fear-mongering racists will paint this as a reason to lash out at every Muslim, and portray the would-be mass murderer as the first soldier of the invading armies of suicide bombers. The liberals will be somewhere in between, stuck between a rock and a hard place, for fear of saying anything that can turn into an argument for either of the previous two. But whether suicide bomber was mentally ill or not, he would not have killed himself the way he did if he had been a Buddhist or Sikh. And as long as nobody will discuss why 100 % of all suicide bombers are religious Muslims, and as long as this will not also be intensely discussed among religious Muslims, Islamophobia will keep growing, and Islam will continue to produce martyrs.
Most practicing and believing Muslims are not jihadists. And basically the largest part of immigrants from the Muslim world are not practicing or believing Muslims. However.
Islam has serious problems in facing the modern world. It is a conquerors religion which has no room for honorable compromise – the world is in the eyes of Islam divided in Dar-al-Islam (House of Islam) and Dar-al-Harb (House of War). Period. No grayish, boring middle ground. The exceptions to this outlook (they do exist) remain an extreme minority, aggressively disregarded by mainstream Islamic practice and theory as formulated in Mecca or Cairo.
The only ones who can change this picture are peaceful religious Muslims in the West. And so far they aren't doing it. As long as they leave the interpretative privilege in the hands of preachers and theologians in the Arab world, nothing will happen. There is a misconception among religous Muslims in the West that this is not their problem, and that they can go to Mosque on Friday and listen to the same hate sermons, or political apologetics for hands-on jihad, as do the crazies, and somehow be home free because they don't kill anyone. I blame this to a large part on an Arab culture of conformism, lethargy and obedience to authority and authoritarianism. Another misconception is that ever so many Intellectuals from the Muslim world can bring about any change. They can't. They are secular. They have as much a say in the direction of Islam as has Barak Obama. It is only and solely the religious Muslims who can.
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| Hamas teaching the young. |
To be even clearer: Another, and even much more blood soaked religion, like Islam, spawned from Judaism, 2000 years ago. And it took the Christians some 1700 years to at least partially get their shit together and abandon their barbarism and blood thirst. Problem is though, our modern fast-paced age does not have this kind of patience. Nobody, meaning nobody, will accept another 200 years of Muslim suicide terrorism, before religious Muslims - in word an deed - loudly start asking themselves what the hell they are doing and what their leaders are saying.
It may be considered unfair that the Christians were given a longer grace period for their barbarism. But then again, the crusaders and inquisitors did not have the material privileges of today, such as the Internet, cell phones or computer. Nor the Atom Bomb.
Left wingers will no doubt claim the suicide bomber in Stockholm was a madman, possibly provoked into a psychotic state by the Islamophobia rampant in Europe (Islamophobia is indeed rampant in Europe). The fear-mongering racists will paint this as a reason to lash out at every Muslim, and portray the would-be mass murderer as the first soldier of the invading armies of suicide bombers. The liberals will be somewhere in between, stuck between a rock and a hard place, for fear of saying anything that can turn into an argument for either of the previous two. But whether suicide bomber was mentally ill or not, he would not have killed himself the way he did if he had been a Buddhist or Sikh. And as long as nobody will discuss why 100 % of all suicide bombers are religious Muslims, and as long as this will not also be intensely discussed among religious Muslims, Islamophobia will keep growing, and Islam will continue to produce martyrs.
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