Islamo-Realism

My Response to a Liberal Anonymous Christian:

Thanks for your concerned and thoughtful response:

·       If you are concerned about human rights violations, then you'd focus on the violations and not use the violations to prove some point about the religion. Islam is a false religion--which, as it happens, means that there is no "true" interpretation of it. I know several Muslims who believe that the Koran teaches love and mercy and there are many like them Maybe they're wrong about the "real" meaning of the Koran, but that's not the point. The problem with Islamophobia is that it tends to lump all Muslims into the category of either terrorist supporters or potential terrorist supporters.

I appreciate your response because these are substantive issues – issues with which I have long struggled. You are right that my main concerns are the “human rights violations.”  I don’t see how I can stay silent as these appalling rapes, forced conversions and genocides continue through much of the Islamic (and communistic world).

However, if these were isolated instances, you would be correct to question my concerns about Islam. While it is true that a certain minority of Muslims – like the Sufis - do not take their holy writings literally, the vast majority of Muslims do take them literally and want to impose sharia law wherever they can. As a consequence of this, there is not a single Muslim nation where non-Muslim have not been reduced to a second class status and sometimes even far worse.

For the exception of very brief periods, this seems to have been their historical experience under Islam. Therefore, although I am pleased whenever a human rights issue can be successfully addressed, it also should be observed that these problems have been ubiquitous under Islam. We can treat the symptoms, but if the underlying cause remains, it will just re-express itself, as it now does, wherever there is a sizeable Islamic population, as we are beginning to find in the West.

I think that it is unfair to compare conservative Christians to Muslim terrorists:

·       I don't think that Jesus taught us to be hypocrites on human rights, but the fact is that conservative Christians in the US tend to be hypocritical on human rights. It's no accident that the Bible Belt was also the place where Jim Crow was established.

Were these really Bible-believing Christians or were they merely cultural Christians, more similar to our liberals? I really don’t know. Please also bear in mind that it was Bible-believing Christians who had vigorously campaigned against slavery here and brought it to an end in England under the leadership of William Wilberforce.

Admittedly, Christians have done terrible things, betraying their faith. However, when they did so, it wasn’t because of their religion had given them encouragement. However, the Islamic terrorists are finding direct support for their actions from the Koran and Hadiths and are claiming to be the true Muslims.

Westerners naively think that the Islamic experience will be different in the West. They think that we have to sharply distinguish between the terrorists and the “majority of peace-loving moderate Muslims.” However, they are in denial about the nature of Islam, Islamic nations, and the historical Islamic experience. They wrongly regard Islam as vacuous, neutral, and capable of promoting any number of interpretations and peaceful expressions. To point these things out is not Islamophobia but Islamo-realism.