Friday August 19, 2005
Where did all the updates go?
- Posted by Rob (#1) on August 19, 2005 18:34 CEST
I'm quite sorry for having been so quiet the past few days: I have been busy at work. I'll check some headlines now and will post a few news-related entries before I declare the start of my weekend.
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Moderate and radical Islam
- Posted by Rob (#1) on August 19, 2005 19:05 CEST
News-related intro: trouble in Jordan. Three missiles have been fired. Two missed the USS Ashland and the third landed on a taxi near Eilat airport in Israel without explosion. There seems to be just one casualty. Claiming the attack are the Abdullah al-Azzam Brigades, leaving this note:
"The Zionists are a legitimate target and we warn the Americans, who are spreading their corruption throughout the world and who have stolen the wealth of the Muslim nation, to expect even more attacks," it said.
Actual point: I wish these people would leave "the Muslim nation" out of their cries. World War V is about terror, not the Islam. Even if or when radicalists succeed in brainwashing people to see the US, the Anglosphere or "Zion" as the big evil, we should avoid McCarthyism ourselves.
One reader recently contacted about this distinction between moderate Islam and radical Islam makes any sense, asking whether political correctness was a force at work here. This was my reply, which I hope is a fair analysis:
I've had both good and bad experiences with Muslims and I'd like to offer some hope. I do think that there is a difference between radical Islam and moderate Islam and that the latter is the mainstream variety. In fact, I consider the radicalists to be a response to prevailing influences of secularism into Islam.
In my life, there's plenty of evangelist evidence: the shoarma shop around the corner sells pork products and beer, the owners speak Dutch and are extremely friendly. Dutch McDonald's franchises (McD's being the epitome of Western capitalism and globalisation, no?) has Golden Arch-themed headscarves for the Muslim women they employ and desire to wear them. A Muslim friend of mine visits the same rock concerts as I do and we happily share beers and joints (pot is legal here).
Individual, non-evangelist interpretation of religion and spirituality exists. It is being embraced. I refuse to consider totalitarian and terrorist brainwashing and violence as mainstream Islam - dictators, mullahs and angry imams have always wanted the religion be that way, but I think the reason they're getting so active is out of desperation, seeing the population they wish to control slowly but steadily moving our way.
I hope I'm right. And think I might be, as I even completely forgot about M'Bassa, a former co-worker from Senegal who enjoyed a number of fried Dutch snacks. His statement: "I can eat this as long as you don't tell me whether it is pork or not". Eat that, radical Islam.
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- Tags: terrorism, Israel, Zionists, Muslim nation, secularism, radicalism, Senegal
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