Sunday, March 11, 2007

Being Muslim is not a crime

There is one issue upon which liberals and conservatives alike appear to be in general consensus, the vilification of Muslims. In a U.S.A Today/Gallup Poll thirty nine percent of Americans admit to “feeling some prejudice against Muslims.” A similar percentage of Americans agreed with requiring Muslims, which would include U.S. citizens, to carry a special ID “as a means of preventing terrorist attacks in the United States.” Twenty two percent stated that they would not feel comfortable with Muslims living in their neighborhood while both liberal and conservative periodicals, such as The Progressive and The FrontPage Magazine, have propagated rhetoric which both agrees with and encourages such views.

I really should not have to point out that these sentiments are strikingly reminiscent of Nazi Germany, the “special ID” being a virtual parallel between the Star of David which Jews were forced to wear. Singling out an entire religious and ethnic group of human beings only by virtue of their belonging to the group is wrong, by definition. The fact that many Americans are openly doing so in modern times is only further evidence that human civilization is yet but a yearling in evolutionary maturation; modern, first world, industrialized society appears to still fervently cling to the religious practice of fashioning a scapegoat upon which to cast its every sin and fear to then be ritually sacrificed thus, as religious theory goes, purging the sins and fears of the society and therefore serving as an act of purification. It seems fairly evident that Muslims have now become the scapegoat of choice for a significant percentage of Americans.

The vilification of Muslims is as transparent as it is both fallacious and wicked being the product of ignorance, bigotry and fear-mongering. There are 1.5 billion Muslims worldwide; I shouldn’t have to point out that they are not all terrorists, just as I should not have to point out that not all Christians are abortion doctor murderers. While it is certainly true that there are radical Muslims practicing a nefarious form of Islam, an Islam which celebrates the metaphysical principles of martyrdom for example, it cannot be legitimately argued that all Muslims accept such forms of Islam. Furthermore, and this is my main argument, by so grossly generalizing, castigating and vilifying the entirety of the Muslim population one is effectively alienating the most crucial asset of a serious enlightenment and reformation movement within Islam, the liberal and moderate Muslims.

When bigoted fear-mongers construct and argue for a stark dichotomy, “either you are for terrorism or you are for freedom,” they are, in effect, not only conflating reality, but also further exacerbating the fundamental problem. Many Muslims reject as strongly as anyone else the terrorism being condoned and propagated by the extremists within their religious ranks, but, when the only alternative offered them is the western accusatory and bigoted caricature of “pluralism” and “freedom” it is not at all too difficult to understand why some may find the choice unappealing.

When political officials publicly declare a “war on Islam” the moderate Islamic impulses which are an absolute necessity in the reformation of radical Islam are by default alienated and estranged, pushed away by the generalization that is conceptualizing Islam as an amalgam of violent terrorists, suicide-bombers, fascists and savages. Human civilization is no more at war with Islam as it has been as still is at war with Christianity; civilization is at war with dogmatic, exclusionary and violent extremism and only an idiot or a sociopath – or, more appropriately, a political criminal - would alienate and deny the moderate impulses which are an absolute necessity in the remediation thereof.

9 comments:

beepbeepitsme said...

Well said.

JDHURF said...

Thank you for the compliment!

Anonymous said...

Then what the hell makes you think being a Scientologist is a crime?

JDHURF said...

Being a Scientology is not a crime and I never made the claim, you are simply falsifying my posts, shame on you. What I did claim was that some of the practices that Scientology engages in, which I listed and provided links to, are criminal. This is simply a fact, negligence is a crime and the purification rundown, which has induced heat strokes, heart attacks and death, is a negligent practice; they don't even have medical doctors on site, that is criminal.

Anonymous said...

Yada, yada, yada, blah, blah, whatever jdhurf. Many, many, MANY practices that Muslims engage in are beyond criminal.
remember your rave and rant that religions are criminal ;-) Shame on you for making an exception for Islam. :-)

JDHURF said...

Excuse me, but, you are falsifying my posts. I have never claimed that being a religious individual, regardless of the religion, makes one a criminal, never. I do not claim that Scientologists, by merely being Scientologists, are criminal, you are desperately confused. What I did say was that specific Scientology practices were criminal, namely the “purification rundown.”

I will now direct you to one of my previous posts entitled “A Distinction Within Religious Criticism” because you are obviously completely blind to the distinction.

JDHURF said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
JDHURF said...

By the way, do try to conduct yourself as a civil adult; the immature ranting contained in your post only serves to further discredit your fallacious argument.

D.R.M. said...

It’s quite ironic, really, that most Islamophobes also happen to be Fundamentalist Christians who, without a moment’s hesitation, will attack any generalizations of Christians by polemic anti-religious figures such as Dawkins.

True, Islam hasn’t gone through as strong a period of liberalization as Christianity did in the post-Medieval Era, but that doesn’t justify putting all Muslims in one boat. Many Muslims here in Canada (where I reside) are very liberal and support state secularism. Heck, one Muslim (Tarek Fatah) even went so far as to campaign against Faith Based Caucuses.

By the way, if you want some more concrete examples for these prejudices against Muslims look no further than this site. Commenter “Luke Landtroop" claims the war against terror is really a “War against True Islam”.