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Islamic Cleansing
September 20th, 2006The Pope, in an academic discussion, quotes a Byzantine emperor who has been dead for a few hundred years. Emperor Manual II Paleologos’ view of Islam way back then was that some Muslims used physical violence to encourage people to convert. The Pope never said he agreed with this theory, nor did he indite Islam as a religion that nandates such violence.
And some Muslims responded by killing people.
Islam needs to cleanse itself of its radicals, those few individuals who would use the sword to coerce conversion. Islam needs to perform this cleansing quickly. The world is quite willing to accept Muslims as our friends, neighbors, and equals, and recognizes that the violent zealots are a tiny minority. But when people fear being killed in the name of religious expansion (much as what happened during the Crusades and the Inquisitions), they will soon abandon this distinction and defend themselves broadly.
Islam needs to cleanse itself of violent radicals before the world does.
