First, I want to say that Islam is nowhere near homogeneous. There are modern Muslims that look at Islam in much the same way that nominal mainstream churches look at Christianity … it is viewed not as all encompassing, and they reject the idea that the Koran is anything more than just the writings of men without any infallible truth. I would posit that is a minority position at this point. There are others on the opposite extreme who would just as soon slit your throat if you were not a Muslim as look at you. There other others in between. If only 5% of Muslims are of the “slit your throat” variety, that means there are millions of people out there willing to slit your throat.
Educate yourself about those that do intend you harm … make sure you understand them. They are here (i.e., this country). Radical Islam is not a “nice neighbor” but an inflitration of those who would undermine our constitution. Radical Islam does not accept any religion as tolerable. In the long run, they will even not tolerate themselves (any faction different in even the smallest way from “their own”).
I highly recommend you look at what is the practice of jihad by these countries. TryThe Third Jihad as a start. Look at what Islam teaches its children. Here, teaching children to hate and desire being a martyr would be called child abuse. While I believe there are Muslims that are just as secular as any mainline church member, I know there are others that would want to lull us into thinking all Muslims are peaceful.
Zim,
The majority of southern whites did not support the klan, but that doesn’t mean that the klan should not have been pointed out (and they were whites). Does that mean those that point out “white supremacist” are bigoted for pointing out the obvious?
You ignore the fact that post started with the claim that Islam is nowhere near homogeneous. The post started with the claim that there were plenty of Muslims that were not violent, that are different from and mostly dishonored by the violent Muslims that rant and rave. In fact, I even posted a wild guess of those that would be violent as only 5% of the group. You also missed that I stated that those groups that garner violence all deserve our watchfulness. You said: “However, Brian’s attempts to imply that extremism is somehow endemic to Islam and that other kinds of extremism are not as worthy of our vigilance is simply bigotry pure and simple.” Yet what I said was that vigilance needs to be practiced for a small percentage of a group. Your characterization is false … endemic is far from what I stated, and is in fact contrary to my statements.
The fact that you don’t seem to accept what is stated, but clearly believe that it is impossible for someone to be open and clear without a hidden motive seems to imply something of your own mind. Do you believe that someone cannot disagree with you and still be honest? If so, you are much more intolerant than what I would have believed.
While the data is old (2005), and probably the percentages have shrunk (perhaps my 5% is accurate, hard to say) in 2005, many of the Islamic countries had significantly higher percentages than what I have guessed that support suicide bombings (15%). That was the lowest percentage, with some countries much higher. (Jordan was the highest sited, at 57% support suicide bombings.)
I still stand by my statement that all of Islam is not a threat, even in Jordan, 43% of the people there would have said suicide bombing was not acceptable. That does not mean that we should ignore the percentage that believe even suicide bombing is acceptable.