The other day I blogged about a meeting the editorial board of the Dallas Morning News had with leaders in the local Muslim community. I described the Muslims as defensive and evasive. Mohamed Elmougy, who led the group, wrote a subsequent e-mail to my supervisors and to me describing me as dishonest, saying that I've singlehandedly burned the bridges the Muslim community and the DMN have built, and that I should be fired.
I've spent a good part of today transcribing the recording of the meeting. I have the entire transcript posted here on the DMN editorial board blog. It's over 7,000 words, but I strongly recommend that you go read it, to get a flavor of the questions we asked, and the answers they gave. We're going to try to convert the soundfile to a postable format, so you can listen to the meeting at some point. But I wanted to get this transcript up today.
Note especially the obfuscation, the evasion (e.g., avoiding a direct answer to the repeated question of whether the US should live under sharia law), the defense of sharia punishments like hand-chopping and stoning, and the attempt to answer legitimate questions by challenging the motives of the journalist for asking it. Note the unwillingness to say that there's anything wrong with Islamic youth reading Sayyid Qutb, that the real wrong is thinking that it's wrong. And so forth.
Just read it.
A transcript you should read
Friday December 22, 2006
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About Crunchy Con
Rod Dreher is an editorial columnist for the Dallas Morning News, and author of "Crunchy Cons" (Crown Forum), a nonfiction book about conservatives, most of them religious, whose faith and political convictions sometimes put them at odds with mainstream conservatives. The views expressed in this blog are his own.
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No one is asked to like it, and no one is going to blame it on the religion for one simple reason: because there is a significant population the represents an exception to that "stunning inevitability".
Which part of Islam calls for such oppression of non-Muslims do you fail to understand? Arguing that Christians have oppressed others doesn't get rid of that fact. If Islam didn't have a vast history and scriptural support for such behavior, you might have a point. The problem is that Islam commands the submission of non-Muslims and your point is moot. You're right, this point is not persuasive at all.
I call upon the observer to acknowledge a more general truth: people crave power over others, and the human invention that permits the acquisition, maintenance and increase of that power is religion.
Some people crave power over others. And no religion is not a human invention to achieve that. So, no, I don't acknowledge that point. If that point is true, then your religion is just an attempt to gain power over me and is just an invention of your own making.
So long as there are US citizens who desire to be Muslims within the confines of the US legal and social framework, they deserve the same protections as every other citizen in the US, regardless of what their foreign siblings-in-faith are or do.
I don't know of anyone here who has argued that they can't be. However, is someone who advocates implementing Sharia in the US wanting to be a citizen within it's social framework?
The news just told them of the burning of a church in country XYZ by a similar crowd of Muslim fanatics.
Considering that many Americans showed support, and helped protect American Muslims after 9/11, I think that question has already been answered. The government has gone out of it's way to support Muslims. Except for a few incidents, Muslims haven't suffered any hate crimes (Jews still suffer more and in a lot of cases at the hands of Muslims).
The problem has been that after five years, American Muslims (or at least their main organizations) don't seem to be to reciprocal or appreciative. Instead we get Muslim imams acting like terrorists on flights, terror cells and terror financing groups being captured, sporadic incidents of violence (always acting alone of course and never having anything to do with Islam), and moderate Muslims being forced out of mosques. So, Americans are starting to believe that maybe the driving force in Islam is jihad and the subjugation of non-believers. The fact that the folks from the Dallas area can't give a straight answer seems to imply that.
I'll take your answer to be that you'll support their right to subvert our society until they actually have a knife at your throat.
What would you like it to imply?
Maybe you should answer the question. No one has the right to enter this country. You don't let everyone who comes to the door enter your house, why is it any different for us as a society? Simply put, we should stop all Muslim immigration. Non-citizen Muslims should be removed. Any citizens with terror ties (like membership in the MAS or ICNA) should have their citizenship revoked and be removed. And finally, we should state clearly that any Muslim calling for Sharia in the U.S. will have their citizenship revoked and be deported. Islam is more than a religion, it is an all encompassing ideology and it's time we recognize that.>
The perception problem that people like Franklin have with Islam is due to the labeling of Islam as a "religion", and therefore assuming that it covers broadly the same areas of life as Christianity. It does not. Even non-fanatical Islamists proudly proclaim that Islam is not compatible with the separation of Church and State, one of the core Christian doctrines from St Augustine onwards. As the Europeans are seeing, have large numbers of Islamists in your country creates a large political pressure block for the adaption of Shariah. In London, which the BBC still pretends is populated by lovable Cockneys, yodeling Imams are replacing the traditional Church bells. Islam should not be considered a religion, but a poisonous ideology, not dissimilar to Communism.>
Chris,
Thank you for your blunt and forthright reply to my question. I certainly don't agree with much of your position, but it is refreshing to have it stated out in the open. I salute your sincerity.
As for what Islam is and is not... Rob, your word choices are illustrative of the problem I have with most of the people who think that not only is the US based on Christian morality, but that we must use a Christian filter for our laws and usages. We have the big three: the cognitive conflict between science and faith; abortion; and homosexuality in general as currently focused on the legal definition of marriage.
Smarter men than you and I proclaimed Christianity a danger and detriment to government. It occurs to me that the same politicians who want to override that proclamation with "faith-based" this and that, will be responsible for the eventual imposition of sharia in the US (something which I personally do not see happening, but I've been wrong before in my most pessimistic moments) not because of any revolution by Muslims, but because of precedents established by Christians in direct contravention of the 1st Amendment.
If the Bible can dictate our laws, why not the Koran?
In the meantime, any citizen who understands the necessity of keeping religion out of government will prevent any such incursion, no matter what religion attempts it. If you (general) are so afraid of Islam, then you should write to your Congresspersons right now and get his or her oath that the 1st Amendment will be rigorously upheld, that all faith-based initiatives will be stopped, and no provably religion-based attempt to change our laws will succeed.>
Franklin Evans, sorry for the delay if you ever get back to this comments window.
As has been noted, to refer to Islam purely as a religion is to focus on one tree and call it a forest. Islam is a political program, an economic system, a binding legal system all wrapped up in a religious mantle. I'm afraid you dodge the issue completely when you seek to compare Christain dictators in Central America with any selected Islamic regime, for the very simple reason that I can easily and trivially find Christian-majority countries where minorities are tolerated and treated as citizens, but I can not find any Moslem countries that do the same thing.
Even the "moderate" country of Turkey absolutely forbids the building of any new Christian church, in addition to steadfastly denying the Armenian genocide, for example. Every single Christian-majority country allows the building of mosques, I challenge you to name one Moslem-majority country that allows the building of new Christian churches/Hindu temples/Jewish synagogues/Zoroastrian temples/etc. I do not think you can do it.
Therefore, there is something about Islam that requires, that demands, further examination, because clearly any time Moslems become the majority, or even a sizeable minority, in a country they begin to influence the culture by various means, including violence.
You stand on the 1st Amendment, and I find that funny, because that Amendment is derived from Protestant Christian principles. If your dream of unlimited Moslem immigration continues, at some point the 1st Amendment will become moot, because it contradicts Sharia.
As a final note, you might take the time to see what Moslems are to offer pagans such as yourself. Here's a hint: Christians and Jews can accept the horrible "Jim Crow" life of a dhimmi. You can't do that.>
Franklin Evans wrote:
Let me ask you the question I had in mind with my passionate statement: the mosque is filled with praying Muslims, including women and children. A large group of people, in which you recognize some friends and neighbors, approaches the mosque shouting angry oaths and brandishing weapons of various sorts. The news just told them of the burning of a church in country XYZ by a similar crowd of Muslim fanatics.
What would you do?
I would urge calm on the mob and seek to avoid a disaster.
But I still would also oppose the imposition of Sharia law on me and my family. So if 20 years from now, thanks to unlimited immigration, I find myself standing in front of a church or synagogue with a Moslem mob bearing firebombs approaching, will you be there with me? I ask this question because in any given week I can find a case of a Moslem mob burning down a church in Indonesia or Nigeria, or shooting at one in Pakistan, or attacking on in Egypt.
But I don't find any cases of Christians in America attacking mosques. So your hypothetical is pretty remote. Mine is reality.>
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