Sort of the same MO certain other people I can think of seem to use….

The last one caught me by suprise.

http://www.floppingaces.net/2009/01/02/why-our-military-is-so-hated-around-the-world/

“GRATEFUL KISS
A grateful refugee camp resident in Kabul, Afghanistan, kisses U.S. Navy Lt. Cmdr. (Dr.) Yevsey Goldberg, who helped bring more than 550-kilograms of rice and other supplies, Dec. 6, 2008. Goldberg is deployed to International Security Assistance Force Headquarters.
U.S. Navy photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Aramis Ramirez”

Yevsey Goldberg. Don’t know the man, from the name I’d guess there’s a good probability that he’s Jewish. Not betting *my* money on it and really don’t care either way, but we’ve a pretty good probability that it’s so.

He’s wearing a uniform. Which means it has that name tag. Nice and big so the D.I. can immediately identify the miscreant, or the division XO can log yet another entry into his notebook with accuracy.

An elderly Afghani man, white beard and all, is kissing him on the cheek. I’m thinking that says a lot more than any press release from CAIR.

Actions do speak louder than words.

Unfortunately, for most actions are uncommon.

– Max

I had a Muslim roomie in college, we used to drink beer and shoot pool together after class. Once at dinner we’d both grabbed the pork fritter. I asked him why, and he said because I’d always eaten it and he thought he’d try it as well.

I reminded him that I’d grown up on a farm, raising fowl, pigs and cattle, so a meat diet was kind of like sweet revenge to me three times a day. And that’s also why I don’t eat corn or popcorn.

He took a bite, chewed thoughtfully, and then remarked as to how it was pretty tasty and his only excuse was he was a *bad* Muslim.

Darn I liked that guy. His actions spoke more about tolerance and diversity than any proclamation made at that university. Or by CAIR. Or Laurie.

– Max

Until you know jacks**t about Islam, and you clearly don’t, you have no standing to use sloppy, undefined terms like “moderate Muslim” that let you feel good, but have no basis in fact.

Just what is the difference between those “selfish cowards” and the average Muslim?

“And there have been conferences and meetings devoted to reclaiming Islam for moderates–and op eds, and editorials, and petitions and statements against terrorism– ” name five, provide citations and links. Did any of them assert that, contrary to the divine, immutable Koran, we kufr have equal rights to life, liberty and self-government?

“CAIR, whatever you think of them, has been consistantly condemning terrorism while also protecting the civil rights of American Muslims.” That statement is a flat falsehood on both fronts, and also meaningless unless CAIR specifically rejects established Islamic doctrine regarding the inferiority of the kafir.

“One moderate Muslim activist recently noted that Muslims who hate America do so because it is what they have been taught.” Well, freakin’ duh! And just who was this rocket scientist–citation/link, please?

And one last time, Laurie, who/where on this thread has equated Muslims and demons? No one is tarring a whole “people” (whatever that is in this context), but we are tarring a religious ideology–Islam, which is expressed in law as Shari’a. I’ll bet you can’t even explain why Islam has no theology, but only law. Stop the schoolteacher bit and start learning, leave your feelings at home in the closet.

I wouldn’t dream of contradicting you. I lived for many years in Bahrain and spent many months in peacetime in the Kingdom and most of the Gulf Emirates and made friends wherever I went. I would say that you strike me as the quintessential Westerner who is more than willing to attribute the cherished attributes of Western Civilization to other people based on some exposure to the most cosmopolitan of their race who have traveled to America or Canada and settled peaceably into our clime. In other words, you really don’t know them.

In Bahrain (Sunni minority ruled, Shia majority), the emir had to lock up the Islamic clerics that kept calling for his death and the death of all his family and for this he was greatly chastised by the various idiots around the world who did not believe that those calling/demanding death were serious. Now for those of us who checked under our cars every day before we got in them and found that people around us really were trying to kill westerners eating out in restaurants by setting off multiple firebombs at all entrances/exits to the eateries in question, yeah, we took it seriously. So did the emir. He locked up those calling for jihad.
Being a muslim, he periodically flushed the jails of most crooks, thieves, murderers, attempted murderers; usually in conjunction with Eid.

A Kuwaiti friend gifted me with a Koran when I was stationed there. English and Arabic of course. You should find it and read it. That book is the word of God to all muslims and while it might strike you as odd, many muslims have found it counter to their religion to suppose that any parliament of men/women could pass laws that contradict even the slightest word of God as written in the Koran and this is why “democratic” government fails to launch in the muslim world. Such a thing runs counter to the word of God and must not be allowed.

I discount your words about CAIR. They spend most of their time words and effort at attempting to explain away the atrocious and vicious acts of so many muslims in America who have tried to kill Americans and been caught in the act or prior to the act.

I have many muslim friends and acquaintances but they would be the first to tell you that no voice of moderation in islam goes untroubled by fanatic islamic goons. If they aren’t being attacked by the mutari in the Kingdom it’s the baseeji in Iran. When islam can generate murderous riots that take the lives of scores of muslim rioters on false reports that detainees at Gitmo were subjected to having their Korans flushed……well, you can see that for a brave “moderate” to stand in front of such a crowd and question their idiocy at rioting simply isn’t done. Look at what happens to brave “moderate” voices in islam and you’ll see why their voices and views are never expressed and never heard. The last ones I recall were 3 women in Pakistan that were murdered by their own families for daring to announce that they wanted a say in choosing their own husbands. Before that I think it was Benazir Bhutto blown to pieces in a totally expected reaction to her return to Pakistan.

I wonder how different things in Afghanistan would be if Shah Masood had survived his assassination. The Lion of the North had impressed me for over a decade. I would have liked to see him running Afghanistan instead of Karzai.

At the end, there can be no moderate voice in islam to critique the actions of those dedicated to jihad because that runs counter to islam. You can see this every day by just looking at what happens to those that cooperate with the West in Iraq and Afghanistan. They are hunted down, in the night by their jihadist neighbors and brutally murdered along with their extended family. It’s going to take a top down revolution to change their ways and I don’t see the Sauds as having the balls to do it and if they cannot there is no one of sufficient stature in islam to change islam. The house of Saud, as the custodian of the 2 holy mosques has what remains of the old authority of the caliphate and yet are as aware as any other emir that they cannot control the beast without excising it completely and nothing persists like a persecuted minority, particularly one that believes totally in martyrdom and jihad.

As I remember telling a young dedicated democrat on a flight out of SFO to San Diego who asked me about the GWOT, I just don’t see any options. It resembles the current situation in Gaza. The enemy of the West has attacked and attacked and attacked and is finally checked by a counterattack. There is no option. We in America have been attacked and attacked and attacked and there is no option but to counterattack. A year or so ago there used to be those on the left that argued that Islam would sort it out in some sort of Reformation between Sunnis and Shias. The idiots obviously were unfamiliar with the Reformation. I would not wish that on Islam or anybody.

Korans aren’t expensive. They give them away at mosques. Why not get one, read it, accept that all muslims view it as the word of God and then reconsider your worldview of islam? You may recall a story from about 8 or 9 years ago talking about some “volunteers” in Afghanistan being taken into custody by the taliban for being christian missionaries proselytizing the faith in Afghanistan of all places, under taliban rule, where apostasy for a muslim was punishable by stoning to death. To be brutally honest, I didn’t much care what the taliban did to people that stupid….err, filled with faith. That they were willing to die a martyrs death is fine with me, good luck to ‘em but that they were willing to tempt muslims to be stoned to death by a regime that proved over and over again that it was ready willing and able…contemptible.