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Originally Posted by dbussone
This is a very insightful piece. Those of us our age may be aware of this historic fact but our juniors are generally oblivious to what we think of as recent history. We have leaders who are in the same mode right now. One recent statement is: "ISIL is not Islamic." Another is: "The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam". I'm skating on thin ice but I think we need to understand the context of our current situation.
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Do you know any Muslims? This is like saying all African Americans are followers of Black Panthers kind of exhortations to violence or all Christians saying that we should bomb abortion clinics.
I went to library school (University of Denver Class of 1984) with a kind decent but very religious librarian from the University of Mosul. The Iran-Iraq War did somewhat revolutionize him judging from the letters sent to me after he want back to Iraq. His friends though-- a group of University of Denver Graduate Students-- were from different Arab/Muslim countries and EACH and every of these people were individuals with their own take on things. My Iraqi librarian friend was also the brother of some kind of military leader in the Iraq Army so sibling rivalry and input also came into this heavily.
I had a person one year in back of me while at the University of Minnesota Law School who became the first Muslim elected to Congress-- Keith Ellison. His views were ambitious but nothing out of the ordinary according to his U of MN Class of 1990 Classmates. I was Class of 1989.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Ellison I doubt if reading much of his work that you can tell that he is a Muslim.
ISIL is run by very violent extremists and these brutal thugs are hardly reflective of an ordinary Muslim in any country.