America And Islam: The History You DON’T Learn In School
by johnsblogs42 ~ January 31st, 2008. Filed under: Defending America.There is in absolutely no way, a possibility for me to accurately “sum up” the entire contents of an e-letter I just received from the American Congress for Truth. It is an extremely long posting, but worth every word you read of it. So, I shall humbly attempt to do what bit of justice to the content I can, by posting just a few paragraphs from the full article. I very strongly and VERY VERY VERY HIGHLY RECOMMEND that you read the original article on The Middle East Forum. Go grab yourself a cup of coffee, or whatever beverage you prefer, and settle in for a long but very indepth read of Islam’s animosity for America.
The original article on meforum.org is also supported by a huge bibliography of sources for its information. And here’s a hint of how far back this hatred has reached from, does the Barbary pirating years ring any bells?
HERE, is the full article. Here is the text link for those who may require it.
http://www.meforum.org/article/1830
“The Fallacy of Grievance-based Terrorism”
by Melvin E. Lee
Middle East Quarterly
Winter 2008
The fundamental premise of much scholarly examination and public discourse is that grievances with U.S. policies in the Middle East motivate Islamist terrorism. Such assumptions, though, misunderstand the enemy and its nature. In reality, the conflict is sparked not by grievance but rather by incompatibility between Islamist ideology and the natural rights articulated during the European Enlightenment and incorporated into U.S. political culture. Acquiescing to political grievances will not alter the fundamental incompatibility between Lockean precepts of tolerance and current interpretations of Islam: Only Islam’s fundamental reform will resolve the conflict.
Many scholars mark the post-World War I partition of the Ottoman Empire as the origin of Islamist opposition to the West …. Contemporary jihadism is not the result of accumulated grievance; rather it has for cultural reasons been an integral factor in Islamic societies’ interaction with the United States.
What Americans and Europeans saw as piracy, Barbary leaders justified as legitimate jihad. Jefferson related a conversation he had in Paris with Ambassador Abdrahaman of Tripoli who told him that all Christians are sinners in the context of the Qur’an and that it was a Muslim’s “right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to enslave as many as they could take as prisoners.”
The nineteenth century foreshadowed increasing conflict between the United States and Muslim Middle Eastern countries. The failure of effective Ottoman political reform coupled with the evolution of Islamic reform toward greater Islamism and less tolerance set up a conflict between the American notion that governments rule at the consent of the governed and the dominant attitude among Muslim potentates who subscribed to an intolerant, coercive, anti-Semitic, and anti-Christian ideology.
Jihadis thrive in such stagnated conditions. This leads to negative annuity: Jihadism both grows amid stagnation and fuels stagnation. It accelerated coincident with the European Enlightenment and the relative decline of the Muslim Middle East. At its core, jihadism is a violent rejection of many of the fundamental principles of the European Enlightenment. Democracy, free markets, tolerance and freedom of religion, secular government, and separation between the religious, the political, and the individual spark religious fury. It is no coincidence, then, that jihadis, under the banner of cleansing their religion of evil Western influence, have focused their attentions on the United States, the clearest manifestation of the European Enlightenment today. They will continue to threaten Western civilization until they are checked.
Food for thought, I say.
Article info provided by American Congress for Truth and The Middle East Quarterly.
http://hoopyfrooddude.blogspot.com/
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