Are Islamists Just Misunderstood Good Neighbors?
Are Islamists Just Misunderstood Good Neighbors?

Raymond Ibrahim in a recent article titled, “Islam: ‘Appalling and Abhorrent’ in the Eyes of a Blind World,” asserts that Islamic countries have a long history of Koran-sanctioned despicable behavior towards Christians and women.

The murderous rampages against non-Muslims and against females and against converts all over the world must be aberrations, not representative of the true intent of Islam.
Does he not know that Muslims are peace loving people who just want to own cell phones, eat soft tacos, get a good education, and live eternally in fraternal peace and joy with their neighbors throughout the world?  I personally know a peace-loving Moroccan man who owns a restaurant with great take out. When told that Egypt and North Africa were converted to Islam at the point of the sword, not by spiritual conviction, he became quite angry. 

Another Egyptian in a Palestinian grocery store in New York (an engineer by training, but forced by circumstances to work as a store clerk), however, communicated his outrage at the West because of the Crusades of 1095 AD. "Getting even" for that historical outrage is not good enough. There will never be peace in the world according to this man until the outrage of the Crusades is avenged (even though, after the first Crusade, the Muslims in the Middle East defeated the Christian invaders within 100 years).

You people from the West, you critics of Islam and of Muslims, do not, will not, and cannot understand that Islam is the religion of peace.  It wishes well to all people. The murderous rampages against non-Muslims and against females and against converts all over the world must be aberrations, not representative of the true intent of Islam.

Is it not obvious that among a religion that numbers over one billion followers, there are going to be some malcontents who are giving their heritage a bad name? Are you going to smear the dear, warm-hearted, tolerant, loving, family-oriented, kind, intelligent, neighborly, women-cherishing, sincere, motivated, forward-looking Muslim people with a broad brush of accusations and incendiary statements?

Do you not realize there could be a comparable book about Christian atrocities to women?  What about all the battered wives and abused children in the USA alone?

Is not Mr.Ibrahim just another Pharisee throwing the first stone at Muslims?  Is it not hypocrisy and distortion to portray the kind Islamic population of the world, (salaam alaikum to you) to portray this family-building tradition and culture based on the rights of all people to enjoy freedom and happiness (although the words freedom and happiness nowhere appear in the Koran) as hideously sadistic at its core?

It is and must be an exaggeration to portray Islamics as hateful, terroristically-inclined misogynists. 

Why is it wrong to portray Islam this way? Because, well, because if it were true, then it would mean that the very survival of Western Civilization as a force for good in the world is being threatened, and that we are in a cultural, political, and military crisis that is comparable to the first wave of Islamic militancy that took place in the seventh and eighth centuries, and has recurred (albeit with less success) over many centuries up to the present.

How can that be? The Billboard Awards were on TV just the other night, and then Dancing With The Stars, then the final night of American Idol.

A culture war of the magnitude such as that depicted by Raymond Ibrahim or Robert Spencer or Daniel Greenfield or Steve Emerson or Daniel Pipes or scores of other lesser lights?.....No…. They are hysterical. 

No, we must not succumb to the temptation to see Islam as a vile threat..... The Golden Globe awards are coming up.  So are the Oscars and the Emmies..... So are the Country Music Awards and the Soul Train awards....  We are in the midst of a media orgy of glitz, music, competition, smiles, and hip-swaying joy.  

How can anyone think that we are undergoing a threat to Western Civilization at the same time?  It is gloom and doom, an out-of-proportion negative fantasy.  It is a version of reality generated by bored intellectuals. It is insulting to the masses of happy, justified Americans.

Lindsay Lohan's Rolls just got a flat tire, and, is she upset!  She has returned to rehab from the stress.Justin Bieber is awaiting his next contact with the police, as is Alex Baldwin. Madonna signed a three year contract with her Kabbala teacher. Solange just punched and kicked Jayzee in an elevator.

Are we then  expected to worry about Islamic hatred of women, of infidels, of Jews, of Christians, of Buddhists, of Chinese communists, of Hindus, of Sunnis, of Shi'ites, of Al-Qaeda, of Muslim women going shopping with their kids in bazaars in Iraq? 

Come on, you must be kidding me.  Mr. Ibrahim, you say Islam is hostile towards Christianity and towards women - you must be kidding.....