The Rural Blog discusses a NYT article by William Dalrymple who knows Americans fall woefully short in understanding the various branches of Islam:
a dangerously inadequate understanding of the many divisions, complexities and nuances within the Islamic world — a failure that hugely hampers Western efforts to fight violent Islamic extremism and to reconcile Americans with peaceful adherents of the world’s second-largest religion. Most of us are perfectly capable of making distinctions within the Christian world. The fact that someone is a Boston Roman Catholic doesn’t mean he’s in league with Irish Republican Army bomb makers, just as not all Orthodox Christians have ties to Serbian war criminals or Southern Baptists to the murderers of abortion doctors.
I have been trying, desperately, to make this point…. my 2×4 is either not large enough and I grow tired of beating my head against the bricks…
Thank you for sharing though – nice to see others are also shouting into the wind. Perhaps a few will hear the chorus… eventually.
I’m not sure we are all that capable of making distinctions about Christians from most of the comments I read locally.
Certainly I’m not disagreeing witht the comments David was putting forth. People do make a distinction between the American-Irish from the IRA. I personally think the Americans that do not distinguish between Islam and terrorist is a very small percentage.
More accurately I was really thinking that anytime someone claims Christ and then says or does something wacky that we are all lumped together.
If the percentage is very small, how does this fit in?
“Seventy-six percent (76%) of Republicans and 50% of voters not affiliated with either major party oppose building the mosque near the World Trace Center site. Democrats are evenly divided on the question.”
One has no bearing on the other. Because you oppose it does not mean you cannot distinguish between terrorists and a religion.
If skin heads bombed Mecca I somehow don’t think that those of the Islamic faith would be too receptive to Christians building a church there. Maybe I don’t give people enough credit.
They definately have the legal right to build there if they get all the proper approvals. I don’t have any personal preference whether they do or not. Those that want to build should use sensitivity in and take into account the trauma of those in the immediate vicinity. As Americans we are constantly asked to make accomodations those of different opinions. As Americans, the Islamist’s should do the same.