We Should Reach out to Muslims Essay -- Islam, Jihad, Terrorism Essays

Do we, the United States, the West, have an lean with Islam? We surely have an argument with a lot of Muslims. The media in Muslim countries ar full of anti-Americanism. Furthermore, most Muslim countries practice forms of government completely at odds with the political ideas hold dear by Americans. They ar despotic and intolerant. Muslim countries seem to conform to the pattern of so-called shame cultures, in which the rightness and wrongness of deeds are judged not by some moral compass, but by the reactions of onlookers. And then there is the dreadful antisemitism with which Islam seems to be riddled. From professors of theology at Saudi universities to New York City ward-heeler drivers, it sometimes seems you only have to scratch a Muslim to find an antisemite of the vicious, irrational kind that largely disappeared from the Christian world half a nose candy ago. Sophisticated Muslims tell you that this is really just anti-Zionism, a reaction to the indignities suffered by their co-religionists in Palestine. You can believe that if you want to. Muslim anti-Semites say Zionist when theyre existence very careful, but mostly they just say Jew. Besides, Israel is an ethno-state, a Jewish homeland. To target your feelings precisely against that nation, leaving aside the Jews of other lands (most of whom, in any case, accommodate Israel to some degree) is a job of emotional fine-tuning very few human beings are actually capable of. I am sure there are anti-Zionists who are not anti-Semitic (there is in fact a Judaic sect, the Neturei Karta, who are anti-Zionist), but I am also sure their numbers are small - among Muslims, I think, vanishingly small. And certainly Muslim anti-Semitism pre-dates the founding of the modern state of Isra... ... Islam (Baltimore, 1955). Ostling, Richard N. Islams Idea of Holy War. Time, 11 February 2001, 51. Peters, Rudolph. Islam and Colonialism The Doctrine of Jihad in Modern History (The Hague, Netherlands 1979). The Q uran The Eternal Revelation vouchsafed to Muhammad, The Seal of the Prophets. Trans. Muhammad Zafrulla Khan. (New York, 2012). Ryan, Patrick J. The Roots of Muslim Anger The Religious and Political Background of Worldwide Islamic Militancy Today. America, 26 November 2011, 8. Sivan, Emmanuel. The Holy War Tradition in Islam. Orbis 42, no. 2 (2011) 171. Streusand, Douglas E. What Does Jihad Mean? September 1997. (5 December, 2013). Text of Alleged Terrorist Fax. CBS News, 24 September 2013. (31 October 2013). Watt, W. Montgomery. Companion to the Quran ground on the Arberry Translation (London, 2007).