Quote:
Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
(a) I said I didn't disagree.
(b) This game of "you aren't condemning your bedfellows strongly enough" is so tired. It's tired no matter who's the target. It's about as tired as the "you're being hypocritical" game, a related species.
(c) CAIR -- to take one Muslim group recently attacked on this board for being too close to terrorists, or full of felons, or something -- put out a press release about the UK bombing plots. It starts with a condemnation of acts of terrorism. I don't recall seeing it reported anywhere. If they say the right things, who cares?
(d) If those British MPs had put out an open letter condemning Islamist terrorism in the strongest possible terms, is there any chance at all that anyone who reads this board would have heard about it? I doubt it. (I'm not blaming any of us. We get our news from media. Controversy sells.)
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(a) When you start a post with "not to disagree, but..." it suggests something other than strong assent. More importantly, you went on to blame the failure of Muslims to condemn extremism and terrorism on oppressive governments -- in essence, agreeing but offering a reason. And I was disagreeing with the reason.
(b) Not to disagree with you, but.... Oh, hell, I disagree completely. Hatred -- killing hatred -- doesn't spring up overnight, or from nowhere. Especially a hatred purportedly based on faith and religious teachings. It is learned over years. Here, it is learned from leaders, especially religious leaders or those who coopt religion, who express and applaud hatred and violence in sermons and conversations and posters and the like.
Tolerance, too, is learned over years. But the carrier of that message must have the same credibility, the same inside influence, that the people promoting hatred have. Otherwise, it's a message from outsiders that is ignored.
Whatever condemnation we've heard has been tepid to say the least. Muslim leaders need to condemn Muslims who attack civilians. Full stop. They need to stop suggesting that it's bad, but okay if the other side does it, or let's look at Israeli "terrorism", or the like.
What I am asking them to do is the same thing that you ask American leaders to do over, say, Abu Ghraib or Gitmo -- say that it is wrong, say that it is not our values, say that those who did it or directed it should be punished. And not say "all torture of prisoners is bad, whether its done by Americans or Iraqis or Israelis or Russians." Because the former means that you are taking a stand against your own people and government, and you are trying to be a voice that influences others of your own people. And the latter is just saying "a pox on both their houses" and is ultimately meaningless.
If they cannot take a strong stand now, publicly, then it is absolutely certain that they are not taking that stand when it really counts -- in the mosques and writings and schools and private discussions that really influence people's lives. Muslim children need to grow up thinking "my Imam says Hezbollah is wrong because they intentionally kill civilians," not "my Imam thinks that both Israel and Hezbollah use bad tactics, but at least Hezbollah is fighting for the right cause."
(c) The CAIR statement is a prime example. They give a general "condemnation" of "terrorist" by all -- states, not-states, individuals, blah blah blah. In other words, they are equating Israel's conduct with Hezbollah's. And they are not singling out people of their own faith and their own ethnicity and their own community and saying "this is wrong -- these people are wrong."
(d) Maybe, maybe not. But we did hear what they did say. And I suspect that if Muslim religious leaders were regularly speaking out against Hezbollah and Hamas, we would hear that too.
