Well. I\u2019m done. Sorry. No more patience with Muslims. I saw the CAIR \u201cfrontlash\u201d telling everyone not to judge Islam based on this kind of thing. Too late. Religious freedom in the United States was a truce between rival Christian religions.<\/span><\/p>\n That truce allowed others in too if they played by the rules. But there is a conspicuous group not playing by the rules and they have not been for some time.<\/span><\/p>\n And before we get started with a \u201cit\u2019s only a small percentage\/a few bad apples\u201d argument let\u2019s just skip over that to its moral equivalents: \u201cnot all Communists shot people into ditches in the Soviet Union\/not every Nazi party member was busy shoving people into ovens in Auschwitz.\u201d Not every adherent of state Shinto was a kamikaze pilot either. Not every Roman era Judaean was a zealot. Not every Roman was in a legion. Etc.<\/span><\/p>\n At some point you draw a line and say, \u201cThis behavior is incompatible with our civilization.\u201d Letting one more of these massacres take place because of some misplaced notion that a small group has \u201chijacked\u201d Islam is simply one too many.<\/span><\/p>\n There are vast portions of the globe that tolerate Muslims since they are already the majority there and will let them get up to the kinds of hijinks they are used to. These folks should be resettled someplace with their own kind.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Now, my hasty and sleepy reply:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Not all Communists or Nazis killed people, but Nazism and Communism advocated and taught the killing of people, and zealous Communists and Nazis supported such killing.<\/span><\/p>\n The same is not true of Islam.<\/span><\/p>\n As for the CAIR press conference in Anaheim last night, I know, like, and respect Dr. Muzammil Siddiqi, the prominent Harvard-educated imam who led it off. The idea of deporting him because of his religious beliefs is abhorrent to me, and thoroughly un-American.<\/span><\/p>\n You\u2019re right that not every adherent of Japanese Shinto was a kamikaze pilot \u2014 and that\u2019s one of the reasons that American policy was never to punish adherents of Japanese Shinto merely for their religious beliefs.<\/span><\/p>\n You\u2019re right that not every Roman-era Judean was a zealot \u2014 and that\u2019s one of the reasons why the harsh brutality of Rome toward all of the residents of Judea strikes normal people as so extreme and amoral.<\/span><\/p>\n You\u2019re now talking about forcibly rounding people up into camps on the basis of their religion and expelling them from the United States. Inevitably, this would involve vast levels of militarization, midnight knocks on the door, and the hustling of men, women, and children off in army transports.<\/span><\/p>\n I would not be willing to continue living in such a nation. I would prefer to be arrested and sent into exile myself.<\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s appropriate that your posting name is \u201cBig Brutha.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n I hope that what you\u2019ve written here is the (understandable) expression of a passing rage or, perhaps, merely a poor joke.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n As I\u2019m putting this together, \u201cBig Brutha\u201d has answered me, as follows:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Brother Peterson,<\/span><\/p>\n Sadly, I am entirely serious in my suggestion. At a certain point ideologies, whatever their origin, have consequences. I believe it is problematic to argue that Islam is some how not in the same category as National Socialism or Soviet Communism simply because it espouses some good principles mingled in with some bad ones. I believe that there are a great many beautiful things about Islam and in Islamic culture and civilization. I have lived in Muslim countries almost non-stop since I completed my education. It is not as if I am ignorant of the history, the theology, and the culture. There is much that is noble in it. But that same can be said of the other ideologies I mentioned, no matter how distasteful people may find the comparison.<\/span><\/p>\n There were millions of adherents to these other ideologies as well and arguing that they were all unmitigated and unreasoning psychopaths is at least comparable. I do not find that true of any of the groups mentioned. There were many eminent scientists, learned teachers, artists and others intellectuals that were devout adherents to these ideologies.<\/span><\/p>\n You can say that Islam does not preach violence and I will agree that there are certainly strains that are more pacific than others but any one with a rudimentary knowledge of Islam\u2019s history knows that it has always had expansionist tendencies which were often satisfied by conquest. (One can make the same argument of Christianity in the Middle Ages but it was largely on the defensive versus Islam except for the Crusades.) Byzantine history is one long saga of attempting to stave off the endless advance of the Abbasid Caliphate, the Seljuks, and later the Ottomans, all of whom marched to war against the Greek Orthodox infidel.<\/span><\/p>\n As to the methodologies by which such a thing would be accomplished: I agree, it would be a level of coercion that one does not wish to think of. But the alternative is what? Wait while various adherents of this faith by ones and by twos lose their minds to the decidedly less pacific strains\/versions of Wahhabism, Salafism, or whatever particular belief set Daesh\/ISIS accepts as normative? How long do we wait? Until all of them have a change of heart for the better? I do not believe the Constitution obligates me to wish my fellow citizens to continue dying because they desire to uphold the notion of freedom of religion. What is the end game? I do not have the right to allow my own preferences for religious pluralism to dictate the continued deaths of my fellow citizens.<\/span><\/p>\n What would you advocate? Because continued patience and understanding may be wonderful at the individual level but is doing nothing to lessen the body count of those who are victims to this particular ideology.<\/span><\/p>\n I am not insensitive to Muslims as individuals. But as a group I have seen them kill and kill and kill in this century. Again, I realize that it is clear that some of what has occurred might be construed as a natural response to some policies of the United States and other nations in their dealings with various Islamic countries. That makes my argument more sound and salient I think, rather than less. There is something that causes some Muslims to believe that Western Civilization must be destroyed by force of arms. I grant you, that there are many things I don\u2019t much care for about it myself. But there are countries where Muslims can have Sharia with all of its trappings. There are countries where Muslims do not have to feel like they are mistreated or second class citizens. There are countries where their ideologies are embraced already. What good is it to have them living in the United States, for example, or France where the mores of society induce them to kill innocent people out of some kind of frustration\/anger\/disillusionment? Let them go to or return to places that accept their ideology already rather than have them mixed in among us and seething with anger.<\/span><\/p>\n I know they are not all murderous. But the problem is that we don\u2019t know which ones are. And the percentages that nominally support these kinds of actions are uncomfortably large even if they are not majorities. If I filled a glass with water and then added poison as even a tiny percent would you be willing to drink it? Even if it wouldn\u2019t necessarily cause death but maybe only sickness? That is what this is for the body politic.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I don\u2019t have time to reply to him, and probably won\u2019t until late tonight, at the very earliest. \u00a0I have to say, however, that I\u2019m horrified, although I understand the frustration, pain, and anger from which such a position emerges.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I would not continue to live in the kind of country envisioned by \u201cBig Brutha.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n As part of my response, I might mention a few of the Muslims who would need to be rounded up and deported, if \u201cBig Brutha\u2019s\u201d idea were to be implemented. \u00a0Some examples of the type of the people I would be citing:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Fazlur Khan, structural engineer who designed the Sears Tower and the John Hancock Center<\/p>\n Khaled Hosseini, physician and author of The Kite Runner<\/em> and A Thousand Splendid Suns<\/em><\/p>\n Congressmen Keith Ellison (D-MN) and Andr\u00e9 Carson (D-IN)<\/p>\n Ismail Poonawala, my dissertation advisor at UCLA<\/p>\n Farooq Kathwari, CEO of Ethan Allen [Furniture] Global<\/p>\n Fareed Zakariah, well-known author and political commentator<\/p>\n Mehmet Oz, physician and television personality<\/p>\n Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, basketball legend<\/p>\n Reza Aslan, best-selling author<\/p>\n Rima Fakih, Miss USA for 2010<\/p>\n Elias Zerhouni, director of the National Institutes of Health<\/p>\n Iman, supermodel and wife of David Bowie<\/p>\n Shahid Khan, owner of the Jacksonville Jaguars<\/p>\n Ahmed Zewail, Linus Pauling Professor of Chemistry at Caltech and 1999 Nobel Laureate<\/p>\n Jawed Karim, the co-founder of YouTube<\/p>\n Ayub Omayya, internationally renowned neurosurgeon<\/p>\n Sherman Jackson, of the University of Michigan<\/p>\n Ahmet Ertug\u00fcn, songwriter and founder of Atlantic Records<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I\u2019m uncomfortably reminded of Ferdinand and Isabella, who, when they completed the Spanish Reconquista<\/em> with the taking\u00a0of Granada in 1492, effectively drove all of Spain\u2019s Muslims and Jews either out of Spain altogether or into hiding. \u00a0They launched the Inquisition in order to ensure that the Iberian Peninsula was thoroughly cleansed. \u00a0They drove out many of Spain\u2019s best farmers and many of its intelligentsia.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Opening his doors to\u00a0Jewish refugees, the Ottoman Turkish sultan Bayezid II commented from Istanbul that \u201cThey tell me that Ferdinand of Spain is a wise man, but he is a fool. For he takes his treasure and sends it all to me.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I\u2019m also uncomfortably reminded of the infamous Missouri Executive Order Number 44, issued by Governor Lilburn W. Boggs on 27 October 1838: \u00a0\u201cThe Mormons<\/a> must be treated as enemies,\u201d it reads, \u201cand must be exterminated or driven from the state if necessary for the public peace \u2014 their outrages are beyond all description.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I would forcibly resist my own government if it ever sought to create anything remotely like KZ-Mauthausen or Cambodia\u2019s \u201creeducation camps,\u201d or engaged in mass deportation on the basis of religious affiliation.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"SS](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2015\/12\/Bundesarchiv_Bild_192-143_KZ_Mauthausen_SS-Formation_Auszeichnung.jpg\")
<\/a>My father participated in the liberation of this camp as part of the 11th Armored Division of Patton\u2019s Third Army.
(Wikimedia CC public domain; click to enlarge)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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I had a brief exchange in the comments section of my blog early this morning. \u00a0(Still jet-lagged, I woke up far, far too soon.)<\/p>\n
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It concerns a topic that\u2019s important enough, and urgent enough, that I want my response to be very visible and clear. \u00a0I don\u2019t think that I\u2019m acting inappropriately with regard to the person to whom I\u2019m responding because (a) s\/he wrote under a pseudonym (\u201cBig Brutha\u201d), so his or her real-life identity is still safe and secure, and because (b) s\/he did, after all, \u201cpublish\u201d the comment as a public comment on my blog.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
First, \u201cBig Brutha\u201d:<\/p>\n
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