asim said:
I can say everytime I see something about Islam in the media I get more and more tired of trying to defend myself and Islam. Its to the point that I'd rather not even state my opinion anymore as it doesnt make a difference.
The best way to of handled this situation would have been to do it peacefully and in a way that society would not look down upon Islam but instead learn to understand. For instance a few meetings where people would sit down and discuss the situation rather than go into the streets an feel the need to create violence.
These kind of events make the REAL muslims of the western community feel like social outcasts. Yes the cartoons are not accepted in Islam but that doesnt mean there needs to be an all out war every time someone is offended.
Asim
Very, VERY good post.
And, the final bit is exactly the message that should have gone out from the moderate majority .... which is "Hey, that's really offensive. Please don't do that." Then, I rather suspect, there'd have been considerable sympathy for exactly that viewpoint from the rest of the population.
However, when we not only see crowds screaming, shouting and flag-burning abroad, but nuts with guns hunting Westerners in Gaza and embassies being firebombed, not to mention calls for beheadings from demonstrators on streets in THIS country (where the cartoons weren't even published), the message that goes out and, whether fairly or unfairly, is the extreme one and it gets gets labelled as the Islamic one.
It's precisely why the moderate, silent majority need to not remain silent. And to be fair, over the last few days, I've certainly seen the placard-waving imbeciles condemned, roundly and unreservedly, again and again, by one Muslim spokesperson (from the MCB to the man/woman in the street) after another. Maybe, just maybe, it is that unequivocal condemnation from his own community that got the suicide-bomber lookalike to come forward and apologise.
The German people kept quiet in the '30s and we ended up with the third Reich. The majority of union members kept quiet in unions in this country in the 60s and 70s, and we ended up with a left-wing radical union leadership that was more interested in following their own political and social agenda than looking after the interests of their own members .... and nearly wrecked the economy of this country in the process. In both cases, if the silent majority hadn't been so silent, we might have had a good deal less unpleasantness.
Asim, I say to you what I said to Spawn .... nobody has a right to expect you to try to explain or apologise for the more extreme elements from your community, but that doesn't mean that as part of the silent moderate majority, speaking out loud and clear wouldn't be the right thing to do.