Moderate Muslim (Really!) Pens Message To Fellow Faithful

Worth reading in full.

Muslim Canadians, as Muslims elsewhere in Western societies, have felt increasingly besieged for some time now, both from outside their community and from within.

This sense of isolation, of being misrepresented and misunderstood, will inevitably deepen as the full story of the arrests of 17 Toronto-area Muslims on terrorism charges unfolds.

But whose fault is this? Let us, Muslims, be brutally honest.

We have inherited a culture of denial, of too often refusing to acknowledge our own responsibility for the widespread malaise that has left most of the Arab-Muslim countries in economic, political, and social despair.

Statistics and intergovernmental reports over the past several decades have documented a gap, perhaps now unbridgeable, between Muslim countries and the advanced industrial democracies in the West.

...

Instead of acknowledging the reality of the Arab-Muslim world as a broken civilization, we Muslims tend to indulge instead in blaming others for our ills; deflecting our responsibilities for failures that have become breeding grounds of violence and terrorism.

...

We have made hypocrisy an art, and have spun for ourselves a web of lies that blinds us to the real world around us. We seethe with grievances and resentment against the West, even as we have prospered in the freedom and security of Western democracies.

We have inculcated into our children false pride, and given them a sense of history that crumbles under critical scrutiny. We have burdened them with conflicting loyalties - and now some of them have become our nightmare.

We preach tolerance yet we are intolerant. We demand inclusion, yet we practice exclusion of gender, of minorities, of those with whom we disagree.

We repeat endlessly that Islam is a religion of peace, yet too many of us display conduct contrary to what we profess. We keep assuring ourselves and others that Muslims who violate Islam are a minuscule minority, yet we fail to hold this minority accountable in public.

Wow.

Okay, and now for the link. You have two options.

First, you can click on the original source, here, in the Middle East Times.

Don't click yet, moron. You haven't heard the other option.

Or, you can click on this site, which has a CONTENT WARNING because the top-left logo is a pair of knockers and there are phone-sex ads and chicks lifting their skirts to show off their heinies, and has the slogan A Conservative Who Likes Naked Women. Deal With It.

I think I'm about to throw a lot of traffic towards the Middle East Times.

posted by Ace at 03:50 AM

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