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Understanding Islam and Al Queda
October 19th, 2007Understanding your enemy is critical. Understanding who is not your enemy may be more important.
Much to their credit, the west has gone to great lengths to differentiate the average Muslim and the average moron (i.e., jihadist). They are different critters, and killing one but not the other is good policy, good strategy, and a good exercise of new military equipment.
The October issue of Reason magazine carried an article on the intricacies between Kurds, Iran and Iraq. As insightful as this article was (as almost all Reason articles are), two neighboring passages caught my attention.
A Vanity Fair reporter mentioned that “every person he visited (in Iran), with the exception of one single imam, offered him alcohol, which is banned.” This agrees with what an Iraqi expat said on a local talk radio program, where she claimed that the average Muslim was identical to the average Protestant, in that they went to services maybe twice a year and committed every non-violent sin in the Holy Book. In other words they took scripture with a grain of Lot’s salt.
But author Michael J. Totten also mentioned the other Muslim variant … idiots ala Al Queda. “Its now infamous warnings to street vendors in Iraq’s Anbar Province not to place cucumbers next to tomatoes in the market because the vegetables are ‘different genders’.” This is cited as “one of myriad reasons why most Sunni Arab tribes in that region recently flipped to the side of the hated Americans.”
Contrast these two extremes, and your head will either swirl with liberated perspective, or ache from conflicted insanity. The former group believes in their religion, but not its excesses. The other believes in inflicting religious excesses upon everyone through the point of a sword. Combine the worst parts of the Spanish Inquisition of a Gallagher concert, and you have al Queda.
Scripture says it is sin to kill men, but remains silent on slaying vegetable segragating homicidal maniacs. Saving Islam while bombing bin Laden is richeous, sane, corrective, educational, Darwinistic … and entertaining.
