@ Wankette: I, too, have met a lot of very kind, very loving Muslims and Ex-Muslims. Interestingly, most of the stuff the Ex-Muslims complained about is the same kind of things that people tend to ditch Christianity for: an insistance on the letter of the law over the spirit, a lack of perspective, insistence on big showey professions of faith over things like mercy and justice, and so on. An awful lot of ‘em were people who came to the US specifically to get away from the militancy in their homelands.

It’s a very thin and difficult hair to split, but I do think it’s important that we try to separate the Religion from the Culture. I don’t know that your average Midwestern Lutheran Culture or Southern Baptist Culture has all that much to do with Jesus’ message, but a surprising number of people in both regions seem to *THINK* it does.

I’m with Eric.

MAKE PEACE ALREADY!

Make Love, not War!

My father’s mother was the only “religious” practitioner, as it were. My grandmother prayed five times a day, and was in all ways a good, kind, gentle, loving, generous soul. I’m glad she’s not around today to see what is being practiced in the name of the God she worshipped and the religion that gave her such support and comfort.

Another close friend is an Iraqi Muslim, and she practiced her faith quietly, as she told me the Prophet had intended. For example: Ramadan. I’ve lived in places where Islam is the dominant faith, and the week it’s celebrated, people stuff themselves all night after breaking fast.

Ikhlass never did that. She told me that it wasn’t what the Prophet meant for his followers to do — the point of the festival is to think of the poor, to go hungry as they do, then to break your fast humbly, and prayerfully — in remembrance of them and in gratitude that you have food to break your fast with.

A similar situation happened in Judaism in the late 2nd century, when the Romans tired of nearly-constant war with the Jews and finally said “Look, you will find a way to make your religion less contentious, or we will kill all of you.” The Romans sponsered a school and a few Pharasaic rabbies who were pro-Roman, and from that point out, if you wanted to be clergy, you had to go through this school, no dissent allowed. Anyone who didn’t was shunned, and anyone who was vocal about questioning the authority of the school was killed. A typically brutal roman solution, of course, but quite pragmatic: Within a generation, the Jewish strife mostly melted away, and modern Judaism is descended in very large part from that one decision. I’m not saying we can or should use force to transform a religion, but, you know, greed is a very strong motivator. Perhaps rather than forcing it, we could encourage it through economic means.

@ Stephanie: obviously you and I got off to a bad start, and I do think that we should chat and try to find some middleground where you and I can agree and get along like grownups. It shouldn’t be too hard to do, we’re both members of the same country, we speak the same language (English!), we’re members of the same political party, we worship the same God, and we both presumably exhibit physical bilateral symetry. Clearly, with all that overlap, we must have *something* in common. Email me here: three@republibot.com

http://muslimsagainstsharia.blogspot.com/

Links to others there as well. I think the litmus test is whether a Muslim group is willing to criticize the radicals or not. If they do, I’m cool with them. If not, I’m not buying that they are “moderate” at all.