The wretched of the earth

"Meanwhile, I see that Rep. Tancredo has stepped into the pile of doo that Rich Lowry and I dipped our toes into a few years ago: bombing (if not nuking) Mecca."

Ah, I see you read my comments before you delete them! ;^)

What would we have thought if, at the height of "the troubles" in Belfast, the British Prime Minister suggested that any future IRA terror acts would be answered by a nuclear strike at the Vatican?

That the Brits were either insane or evil, most likely. And that would be a pretty fair assessment.

Not terribly different from our attacking Iraq because of 9/11, is it?

Following on your post, Eric, I think the intentions of the attendees at "Khilafah: The Need and the Method" are fairly clear, and do not seem at all benign to me.

I wonder if part of the difficulty of getting straight answers is that we don't want to listen to the Islamists who, for the most part, seem pretty up front about what they want. On the other hand, some of the moderate Muslim leaders appear to be genuine apologists for radical Islam, while others appear (to me) to be on the defensive because they feel their religion is being attacked.

My hope is that we can make common cause with the second category of Muslim moderate, but I don't think common cause can be made with people who appear to be obfuscating and outright lying.

"But I do remember a HUGE debate about weapons of mass destruction, human rights violations, and disregarded UN resolutions."

Or you talking about Iraq or Israel? Those criteria apply to both, although Israel's WMD are easier to find.

I think you are right about that, Eric, and I would add that the difficulty with getting straight answers to direct questions appears to extend to the Muslim speakers I have directly encountered, either at my church, or on-line. To put it simply, I feel that direct answers are rare, and obfuscation and "talking out of both sides of one's mouth" seems to be all to common.

This does not seem to be the case with individual Muslims so much as with those who are trying to do PR. The sense I get is that the waffling has to do with not wanting to tell Westerners what they think we don't want to hear. There are also fictions promoted by, for instance, Saudi Arabia, about how Islam spread peacefully. I've had liberals members of my church get angry at me for pointing out that this is a lie.