Islam, Religion of Peace and Tolerance
The Western world has suffered through a steep learning curve the past several years. If Islam even got a second thought in most peoples' minds, who were not Muslim themselves, it would have been rather astonishing. That religion, like all others, was considered a matter of personal, private adherence, not impinging in any way on others who did not practise the religion.How times have changed. It is so very comforting to believe, to want to believe, that all religions of this world share a basic tenet of peace and goodwill toward others. Some do, and fairly basically, others obviously fall somewhere in between the opposite extreme, and at the very tip of that opposite extreme would sit Islam. That is, with the knowledge we have so painfully gained of late.
Islam appears now to be a religion based on fratricide, holy jihad, extreme xenophobia, homophobia, severely strict adherence to a narrow set of rules of worship of the one true god, excluding all others as mere imposters. Women's place in Islam is a sad and sorry one in that most patriarchal of societies, where to be seen is to be noticed and the corollary to that is to be in immediate danger. Women are either docile bearers of future generations whose physical presence is noted by full head-and-body coverings, or they are despised harlots, tainted by Western ideas and thus legitimate targets for violence.
Within most Muslim societies, particularly in the Middle East, the presence of religions other than Islam are barely tolerated, if at all. The mere presence of worshippers of religions other than Islam is considered a mortal affront to Allah, for he has bidden his worshipping flock to wield the sword of righteous anger upon infidels and convert them to Islam in his honour. Not only will Allah not accept graven images but he will not accept the presence of infidels in his geography.
Muslims demand respect from non-Muslims toward their sacred religion as they feel it is just and their due. But they have no compunction in withholding respect for others' religions for they feel that too is just and their due, since only Allah is the one true god, all others being imposters.
Proportionally to their populations, there are far more obdurately militant Muslims who embrace the concept of holy war than might be the case for any other religious population by far. A signal holdover from medieval times. It is well nigh impossible to argue reasonably with these people, to appeal to their innate sense of justice, for because they are fanatics that sense of justice if it ever truly existed has been irretrievably corrupted.
Only an intransigently narrow point of view remains, which informs the believer that his way is the only way, and all who practise another way are unworthy of any kind of consideration.
That inability to see beyond one's own beliefs and fundamentals of existence means that accepting such people into a broader society of basically Western beliefs and lifestyles as immigrants, is bound to fail. There is no classical give and take, there is only a one-sided demand of give and take.
The two worlds cannot even agree to live in peace, separately. To do so would mean an agreement would have to exist in theory and in practise that each is entitled to their own beliefs and life systems, not to the detriment of the other, but in isolation of one another. It is now too late for that kind of arrangement.
Islamists feel themselves historically hard done by, and they seek redemption through an avenging agenda. The hard-core fundamentalists insist that there will be a future where Islam is paramount and all other religions and peoples will be subject to Muslim rule. And when that happens, Muslims will relent and permit the infidel to live side by side with Muslims, with the important distinction that the infidels will be subject to the historical tax levied to ensure they know their place in this brave new world, and that they realize that they are permitted to live in peace, on sufferance, not on a basis of equality.
How do peaceful, intelligent, and sympathetic citizens of the world adapt to that kind of mind-set? They do not.
posted by Pieface @ Friday, April 21, 2006
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