There is a view that Islam is currently undergoing an experience similar to the Reformation, driven in part by factors such as wider education for women and exposure to the West and its values and practices through modern communications.
If we view Islam through that lens then we can see the likes of bin Laden and the mullahs in Iran and the Taliban as the old guard furiously defending a world that is slipping away from them. This has happened in other great shifts in ideology at various points in history where reactionary elements can’t handle progress and the loss of power and privilege that comes with it. For all the lofty principles in Islam, and the rampant bullshit in some of the cultures which follow Islam, about how valued and free women are, the fact is that men control everything; men are the ones who are most repressive; men are the ones most visibly keen to preserve the old ways; and, not surprisingly, men are the ones with the most to lose if, God (or Allah, PBHN) forbid, women get anything remotely like the equality and freedom they have in the West . Men are the ones running the whole agenda on everything hostile to the West, violent and non-violent, at every level, regardless of whether or not women support those views.
If a seismic shift is going on in Islam, we’d be better off encouraging and supporting those who want to bring Islam fully into the modern world. Then we would share common values and understandings, which would make things like 9/11 and suicide bombings and so on anathema.
For that to happen, we need to begin to understand Islam and Muslims, in all their religious and cultural diversity and aspirations, and accord them the same tolerance we have for religions and cultures more familiar to us.
If we lump them all into pejorative categories, such as ‘terrorists’ and ‘primitive’ and ‘violent’, no matter how true it may be of large numbers but not necessarily large proportions of them, and view and treat them accordingly, then all we’ll do is confirm their view that the West doesn’t understand them and is hostile to them. Which is guaranteed to drive some who might be the agents of change for a better world into conformity with a defensive and ultimately anti-Western position which ensures that things will get worse rather than better.
Anyone with any understanding of how we got into a war with Japan can see the same process being repeated with Muslims. There is nothing to be gained from driving people into a corner where they feel they have no option but to fight back. The Zionists have done it with spectacular success in Israel and surrounding countries, while much of the West has been supporting and is following that path with the rest of the Islamic world.
If we had any brains, we wouldn’t be putting forward trite hostility as in the OP link. Instead we’d be fully supporting the voices of reason and change in Islam, and doing all we can to ensure that visionary and courageous Islamic women in particular are educated and supported in their ambitions for equality with men.
Most working days I speak with several Muslim men and women, from most of the major Muslim nations. Many of them are in Australia with a view to living here permanently. They are not hostile to the West or to its customs. They like what we have and want to share in it, while practising their religion. But they are concerned by perceived hostility towards them because of the actions of rabid zealots like bin Laden. While it resonates with our gut instincts about Muslims as represented by bin Laden etc, things like the OP link just crank up another form of empty racial prejudice like Nazi anti-semitism…
I’m all in favour of wiping out bin Laden and his ilk, but it’s silly and dangerous to view and respond to the rants and impossible aspirations of such medieval zealots as being representative of the whole of Islam.
Just because somebody posts it on the internet or wherever doesn’t mean that it’s correct, any more than the grand American conspiracies against Hinduism http://www.hvk.org/articles/1205/92.html and even its own citizens http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/orgs/american/adl/paranoia-as-patriotism/posse-comitatus.html For the uncensored ravings of certifiable American nutcases who think that the American government is the worst enemy of the American people http://www.apfn.org/old/apfncont.htm . It’s a real tragedy that the unlimited energy machine invented over 40 years ago has been suppressed by the US government and energy utilities, ‘cos it’d be real handy in the age of global warming http://www.apfn.org/apfn/unlimited_energy.htm These morons aren’t any different to Islamic morons and, courtesy of the gun laws in many American states and the apparent absence of gun laws in much of the Middle East, probably about as well armed and just as dangerous to everyone else.
Does anyone think that these American morons really represent the attitudes and beliefs of most Americans?
So why accept the OP link as representative of the attitudes and beliefs of most Muslims? Apart from it happening to fit in with the viewer’s prejudices about Muslims?